I have not written much over the past few months. I am not quite ready to return, but I am lured back, however momentarily, by the current global ferment, much of which is quite scary.

Here, in the United States, it is hard to escape the reality of how vulnerable we are, not just to the home-grown lunatics with assault rifles that gun manufacturers and dealers sell to even the mentally ill for a profit, but to those driven by ideological fervour who want to spread terror as a way of making political statements and assert control.

I certainly do not live here in a state of perpetual fear, but every time I take the Red Line train to downtown Washington, DC, and exit at Union Station, in particular, I am struck by the overwhelming, even impossible task, that law enforcement is monitoring these sites and keeping them and the people who use them safe.

American law enforcement is extraordinarily competent. The problem is, it is impossible to police every single aspect of daily life. Ordinarily, a site like Union Station would be just a grand, beautiful, old building above ground with tons of shops and cafes, and below a fascinating intersection for travellers from the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, catching the Metrorail, the MARC and VRE trains, and the Amtrak trains, up and down the East Coast. In the age of terrorism, stately Union Station and the thousands of commuters who use it could easily become targets for terrorists.

If one contemplates the events of the last few months, beginning with the Paris attacks, November 15, 2015, to where we are today immediately post-Orlando, Istanbul and Dhaka, it is difficult not to give more than a passing thought to both the chaos of the moment and to look with foreboding at what the future holds. This is even more so because of shifting political grounds in Europe caused by the so-called Brexit vote, the obvious lack of preparation for the outcome, and the unseemly running away of those who led the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

In the United States, the presidential election is fuelling just as much anxiety and uncertainty with the real spectre of Donald Trump, an ignorant, racist, misogynist ascending to the presidency, and questions over whether Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, will be indicted over her misuse of high-level government information.

Can things continue the way they are with danger and uncertainty as the overarching new normal? How can it be stopped? These are only some of the immediate challenges in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.

Closer to home, the normalised violence of everyday life and the inability of both law enforcement and policymakers to address the issue with anything else apart from mindless chatter continues to be disappointing, but the sale of the 250-room Oceana Hotel, a prime piece of real estate previously owned by the Jamaican Government, is what brought me back today.

The stories in the media, including Financial Secretary Devon Rowe’s presentation to the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee, on June 29, are amazing in their absence of clarity on issues that the Jamaican public has a right to know. The issue of whether procurement guidelines were followed is a question for the Office of the Contractor General, which I am not able to pursue today due to time constraint. Otherwise, I have gone through several of the stories and have come up with the following questions, directed to the Financial Secretary Devon Rowe based on his testimony last week.

1. Would you agree that selling the building for $385 million meant that it was sold at a loss — a loss to the Jamaican Government and tremendous gain in equity to the purchasers?

2. By pumping $400 million in a building that it no longer owned, didn’t the Government deliberately increase the loss to the taxpayers? Why?

3. If the Government could afford the $400 million to renovate the property as a tenant, why, as now Finance Minister Audley Shaw suggested, could not the auditor general purchase the property for $1 and invest $400 million to renovate but retaining ownership of the property for the Government and by extension the Jamaican people?

4. The agreed rental of $90 million a year, for 10 years, means that in a mere five years, the Government, through the AG’s office, will pay over $450 million to the new owners of the hotel. In 10 years, they would have paid over $900 million. Could these same funds have gone toward the purchase price and/or maintenance of the Oceana on behalf of the Government and the Jamaican taxpayer?

5. Overall, what has the Government and/or the people of Jamaica gained from the sale of the Oceana to the Downing Street Group?

The people have a right to ask questions about how taxpayers’ money is being spent.

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.