It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau

A hundred stories of deep-rooted divisions bedevilling Norman Manley’s party were told by a photograph on the front page of this newspaper last Tuesday. A People’s National Party (PNP) supporter in a brassiere, and her midriff exposed, ripped to shreds an orange-coloured T-shirt she had been wearing after last Monday’s abortive meeting with top-ranking officers at PNP headquarters.

My many readers, I am sure, are not surprised. The seemingly ubiquitous avifauna have been tweeting for months that the PNP is united in division. (I mean that.)

The Black-Bellied Plovers, John Chewits and Banana Quits have consistently whistled about a February 2016 general election. They warble now that a political apothecary is in the field. All will be decided by the strength of his potions.

The birds also shriek that Paul Burke, general secretary of the PNP, is now being compared in the inner sanctum of the party to Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. For students of American Civil War history, you will remember that Irvin McDowell is best known for his defeat in the First Battle of Bull Run, the first large-scale battle of the American Civil War.

Many PNP ginnigogs are calling for the sacking of Burke, the birds caw. They chirp that party insiders want Burke replaced with the man they say is the PNP’s equivalent of General George B McClellan. McClellan, an American Civil War historian wrote, had the mannerisms of Napoleon Bonaparte and the ego to match. The unique predicament in the PNP, of course, is the absence of an Abe Lincoln.

The mind-revealing comments below by the life chairman of the PNP, Robert Pickersgill, told a thousand tales of a deep-rooted disregard and contempt that some politicians, who are drunk on their perceived indispensability, possess.

“The officers and the party leader, we know there are disappointments, and from that basis we are going to make sure the healing process takes place, because at the end of the day, I can tell you, they are all PNP people and they are going to support their party.” (

Jamaica Observer, January 12, 2016)

Our moribund politics treats the majority of its base support and the general population as pawns and peons. Tragically, far too many of us continue to accept the status quo like wildebeests.

We must remember not to forget that Pickersgill also told us: “We believe it is best for the PNP to form the Government; therefore, anything that will lead us or causes us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.”

Political ornithopods (bird-footed dinosaurs), like Pickersgill and his kind, just don’t get it. The folks of St Elizabeth North Eastern and constituents throughout the country want a politics that delivers verifiable results, not useless rhetoric. Citizens are clamouring for more representation and less government.

I don’t sanction any of their strategies that result in the breaking of the law. There is, however, a great challenge here.

The majority of ordinary folk live in a political reality where we get attention more often when there is dislocation. This is one of the great travesties of our society 53 years after gaining political independence. I fully recognise that there is some hidden hand that paid for the 12 busloads [each bus with near 20 citizens] that journeyed into Kingston last Monday. I am told that the total cost of the motorcade, lunch and sundries ran into some $670,000. Whoever, provided the funding has some special interest to safeguard.

But there is a similarly weighty consideration: Why did these folks find it necessary to descend on the PNP headquarters? Simply, the PNP president would not go to them. I am not surprised. Simpson Miller’s boast that she came from the bowels of the working class is convenient political varnish.

The prime minister has apparently succumbed, as country people say, “hook, line and sinka” [in total], to a counterintuitive narrative from Paul Burke, her general secretary.

“There is a handful, just as how there is a handful who massacre a whole theatre in Paris, there is a handful of persons who don’t like the democratic process in the party, who can do damage. They are agents provocateurs.” (

The Gleaner, January 7, 2016)

Burke seems not to recognise some important things. There are leaks at several levels of the PNP. These exist because of vacuums.

Leaks cannot be eliminated. The ubiquity of the Information Age means there are few secrets.

Burke seems to be mentally trapped in an analogue age, while information in his environment is moving at digital speeds. There need not be any confusion here as regards chronological age and technological disparity.

Air Government

On the matter of digital versus analogue thinking, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator A J Nicholson crowned the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) which was held in Paris, France, last month, as a success.

“We regard the outcome of the conference as a positive one for Jamaica, for Caricom and for small island developing states, more generally. We were pleased, in particular, to see recognition of the need to endeavour to keep global average temperature below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” Senator Nicholson told the Senate on Friday. (

Jamaica Observer, January 9, 2016)

When this ‘recognition’ is operationalised it doubtless will be a tremendous positive, I agree. Did this ‘revelation’ require that Jamaica send a delegation of 20 to France for 11 days? How much did it cost taxpayers?

Trinidad and Tobago has oil, natural gas, asphalt, and other commodities that are in high demand in the world market. T&T’s debt to GDP ratio is 45.4 [2015-09-30], according to the Central Bank of Trinidad & Tobago. They sent a delegation of three. Jamaica’s debt to GDP is 132.2. We are the fourth most-indebted country in the world. Did T&T benefit any less from the conference?

In November 2014, a four-member delegation headed by A J Nicholson attended the fourth Japan-Caricom ministerial meeting in Tokyo. What is the measurable and verifiable evidence that Jamaicans benefited? Minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Arnaldo Brown, spent the better part of three years globe-trotting. Last year, Brown racked up a massive telephone bill of over a million dollars. What quantifiable and verifiable benefits have the masses got as a consequence of Brown’s jet-setting across the globe?

Is it that these trips are being used to prop up the CVs of some who are status-deprived? Are these trips mere junkets? Are multiple trips abroad by several of our political representatives and other officials being used as a means of collecting honoraria which the birds tell me are quite sizable [US$s] in some instances depending on where particular individuals are situated on the totem pole of importance?

The 2015 Riverton Dump Fire is still fresh in the minds of hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Corporate Area and environs. According to figures from the Office of the Contractor General, Kenneth ‘Skeng Don’ Black got a $72.5-million contract to transport dirt to put out the fire. The National Solid Waste Management Authority issued contracts in March 2015 directly related to extinguishing the fire valued at $91.6 million.

Today, hundreds are suffering with various respiratory sicknesses because of poisons, inclusive of the cancer-causing benzene, that were released into the atmosphere for over a week.

How can we forget that while the skies of the Corporate Area were carpeted in thick black smoke the Minister of Local Government Noel Arscott and a delegation were in Japan at a conference? Where is the measurable evidence that our lives have been improved as a consequence of Arscott’s trip to Japan?

Only July 19, 2015 Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips and his delegation returned from a conference in Ethiopia. Straightway he went to York Town in Clarendon and set the country in the stand-behind-your-blocks election mode. Was Phillips touched by ancestral spirits on the African continent? I doubt that. The campaign manager for the PNP was doubtless under strict instructions from the prime minister.

Have reports been tabled in Parliament on how best practices and/or knowledge gained from the Addis Abba, Chile, and several other foreign trips will ease the heavy burdens of ordinary Jamaicans in quantitative and qualitative ways?

Prime Portia Simpson Miller has ratcheted up thousands of miles on trips abroad. She has the unenviable record of taking the most foreign trips in four years compared to P J Patterson and Bruce Golding over a similar period. Where are the specific benefits to the poor, downtrodden and disadvantaged for whom the prime minister professes undying love? Have the constituents of St Andrew South Western benefited from her frequent-flyer status?

Simpson Miller has been the Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Western since 1976. Two weeks ago, informal surveys by this newspaper revealed that hundreds in the prime minister’s and adjoining constituencies were living on $300 per day. Last Wednesday this horrific headline was splashed across the pages of the Old Lady of North Street, ‘A plea to Mama P — PM’s constituents beg for fix to ‘despicable’ sewage plight’. (

The Gleaner, January 13, 2016)

Can the people of St Andrew South Western believe Simpson Miller when she tells them, after 39 years, that she intends to make her constituency, “crisp like a biscuit”? (Jamaica Observer, September 15, 2015)

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct, said Thomas Carlyle. In 2009, then Kenya finance minister [now president] Uhuru Kenyatta [son of Jomo Kenyatta] instructed that all permanent secretaries, assistant ministers, and full ministers to turn in their Mercedes-Benz government cars in exchange for the Volkswagen Passat. The move saved the Kenyan taxpayers 2.4 billion Kenyan shillings. A similar system was implemented in Burkina Faso by then President Thomas Sankara. Has our prime minister heard about this cost-cutting measure?

On January 5, 2012, the Jamaican dollar was $86.78 to US$1. Last time I checked, our dollar was $120.73 to the US$1. PNP spin doctors, some in Brioni and others in Dolce & Gabbana suits, tell us that devaluation is healthier than Logwood Honey. Our dollar is now valued at less than US$0.01. The Inter-American Development Bank told us recently that exports are down seven per cent.

Today, poverty has increased by eight per cent. Youth unemployment is biting at 34 per cent. The International Monetary Fund, Work Bank, and other agencies have repeatedly warned us to put our people to work. ‘IMF says Jamaica’s unemployment rate needs to fall and growth increased’, screamed the banner headline of

The Gleaner on September 24, 2015.

The most recent World Bank report on Jamaica also warned: “Chronically high unemployment levels among women and young men increase their vulnerability to negative social outcomes and economic exclusion.”

This Administration has wasted hundreds of millions on phoney projects such as NetServ and the technology park fiasco that should have replaced missing economic activity caused by the closure of the Goodyear Factory in St Thomas in 1997. No minister of the Portia Simpson Miller Cabinet has been made to account for rank incompetence.

Five hundred, mostly male, breadwinners, lost their jobs at Golden Grove Sugar Factory in St Thomas last August. The closure of the recently divested Long Pond sugar factory to Everglades Farms Limited has affected 800 workers and 270 farmers and their families. Dozens could soon lose their jobs at Noranda Bauxite Plant in St Ann.

Why are the majority of ordinary Jamaicans not seeing and feeling the tangible impact of the multitude of foreign trips on the thinking and actions of our political representatives and high-level civil servants?

Why do so many of them go to conferences, seminars and workshops across the globe and, as rustic folks say, they leave like Johnnycakes and come back as dumplings?

The 2015 Legatum Prosperity Index ranks Jamaica’s economy at 132 of 142. “The Prosperity Index is the only global index that measures national prosperity based on both wealth and well-being (objective and subjective data).” [LPI, 2015]

The 2015/16 Global Competitiveness Index ranks our institutions among some of the worst in the world. “The Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016 assesses the competitiveness landscape of 140 economies providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity. The report remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide.” (GCI, 2015/16)

‘Outameni’ is costing taxpayers $900,000 per month in maintenance. While 70 per cent of contributors to the National Housing Trust do not get a housing benefit. Lenny Little-White got a handsome “bailout”. Lambert Brown, Sonia Hyman, Robert Budhan and Percival LaTouche were rewarded with reappointment to the present NHT board by Prime Minister Simpson Miller. Our government recently wasted $120 million dollars on a failed scheme to divest the Norman Manley Airport. No one is held accountable.

Jamaica is too rich to be so poor. We cannot continue to treat mediocrity and failure as premiums.

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. — Charles Peguy

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.