If you pick up one end of the stick you also pick up the other. — Tigrayans proverb, Ethiopia

I met former Prime Minister Michael Manley when I was a student at The University of the West Indies, Mona. At the time I was a member of a small co-curricular group — the Political Science Society on Taylor Hall. As was our custom, we routinely invited leaders in various fields of influence to share their ideas. I remember well the rap session with Manley. It was scheduled to last for an hour. It ended a shade under two. His views were most engaging, especially with regard to the ideals of democratic socialism.

It was very tempting to mistake his socialist ideas for reality. Manley had a magnetic aura. His suave mannerism was unmistakeable. I never drank the Manley ‘kool-aid’ during nor after that rap session. However, several who attended did.

Manley admitted he made mistakes in the 70s. Unlike some today he did not claim omnipotence. Those who are obsessed with mythologising him do his memory a great disservice. They need to learn from Manley’s mea culpa, if they have any sense.

There are some among us who castigate, disembowel, tar, and feather anyone who dares to criticise the legacies of past prime ministers, in particular. Such actions are designed to achieve one main objective — lure folks into a conscious and unconscious web of myth-making.

I think we have not just a responsibility, but a duty to question the actions of those who are elected or selected to preside over public decision-making. Those who come to the public and strenuously seek political office, having got it, cannot then be protected behind hallowed walls, far removed from the critical eye of public analysis and evaluation. Those who entreat to us not to dig up the past and/or speak about the negatives of our political history are part of a grand deception.

I think the good, the bad, and the ugly, especially of our public officials, among other things, must serve as critical signposts. Otherwise we are like ostriches with our heads deep in the sand. This behaviour is a proven formula for backwardness, mediocrity, and poverty.

Walking the past

The decision which the people of Jamaica make in our upcoming 18th parliamentary election will determine whether the country moves farther and quicker along the bridge to the future, with its opportunities and challenges, or reverts to a time which resulted in near-economic catastrophe.

I believe that was the gist of this recent statement by Prime Minister Andrew Holness:

“We had a flirtation with ideologies that were foreign to us and did not serve us well. With all the social problems that needed to be addressed, had we stayed the economic course and ensured that our economy was aligned to the opportunities that were created by the industrial transformations that were taking place, Jamaica would be a better place today.”

Some public commentators have argued that Prime Minister Holness sits at the pinnacle of hindsight, which they say is a luxury. A few overtly state that Holness’s thesis is rendered invalid because it examines the past from what they claim is the “comfortable seat of the present”. I find these declarations utterly ridiculous. Hindsight exists. It always will. Hindsight does not change reality. Were hindsight a legitimate tool of invalidation of the past then all retrospective disquisitions would not only be fruitless, but futile.

Undoubtedly, Manley’s experiment with democratic socialism, which is spawned from a flawed doctrine of Fabian Socialism hatched in Britain, crashed the Jamaican economy in the 1970s. Economic growth figures from the Planning Institute of Jamaica tell the sad tale: 1970 (11.9 per cent), 1971 (3.0 per cent), 1972 (9.1 per cent), 1973 (1.3 per cent), 1974 (-3.9 per cent), 1975 (-0.3 per cent), 1976 (-6.5 per cent), 1977 (-2.4 per cent), 1978 (0.6 per cent), 1979 (-1.8 per cent), 1980 (-5.7 per cent).

The year 1972 was a momentum year for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration of former Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer.

Manley was an intellectual, his administrations (1972-76 and 1976-80) had numerous intellectuals and graduates of some of the best universities in the world. They could have chosen a different route. Fabian Socialism was not the only game in town. There were alternative models.

Consider this, 55 years ago Singapore’s main exports included mosquito coils, matches, and fishing hooks. The Singaporeans borrowed aspects of the economic growth model which Jamaica used in the early 1960s. Singapore’s per capita income was US$400 in 1965. She was expelled from the new Federation of Malaysia in that year. Her small population at that time was mostly uneducated. Corruption was rampant and social upheavals were commonplace. Singapore had no natural resources to trade with her neighbours or the wider global economy.

Notwithstanding all those challenges, under the visionary leadership of its late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his team, they set out to build a new Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew, among other things, encouraged Singaporeans to free themselves from the clutches of mindsets which stigmatised certain métiers as ‘lesser-jobs’. Constant innovation in all forms of economic activity was adopted as a near-national religion, alongside rapid and meticulous advancements in education and training. Lee Kuan Yew went on to lead the transformation of Singapore (725.1 square kilometres), with its few natural resources, into a First World country in less than 40 years. Singapore is a little smaller than our parish of St Thomas, which is 742.8 square kilometres. Singapore was much poorer than Jamaica in the 60s and 70s. They adopted and culturally tailored many aspects of our 60s model. Today they are reaping significant economic and social benefits.

Jamaica could have been in a similar position if we had persevered but appropriately adjusted Hugh Shearer’s Industrialisation Growth Model.

Internal and external damage

The oil crisis of 1973-74 did serious damage to Jamaica’s productive capacity. But we were not unique in this respect. Yes, there is ample evidence that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other external influences did their rotten best to undermine Manley’s Administration. But Manley and Jamaica were not unique in this respect.

There is also copious evidence that Manley himself did a hell of lot to relegate Jamaica to the ignominious category of the ‘poor man of the Caribbean’. As an example, those who did not agree with Manley and his attempts to take control of ‘the commanding heights of the economy’ were instructed to take one of the five flights a day to Miami, Florida, in the USA. Over 20,000 professionals left Jamaica.

I believe Manley’s statement was not only anti-democratic but also anti-Jamaican. Those 20,000 Jamaicans were some of our best and brightest. They were essentially scared into exile. They took with them not only their specialised skills and talents; they took their investments and their families. Many have never returned to Jamaica.

You cannot pull the poor and dispossessed out of their downtrodden state, out of poverty, by creating and promoting systematic envy and hate of the middle classes and the rich. Sowing, watering, and fertilising the seeds of ethnic divisions, class hatred, racial enmity, and other forms of divisiveness predicated upon differences have never succeeded in liberating, empowering, and/or advancing on a sustained basis majorities maimed by systematic suppression and oppression in any jurisdiction.

Manipulations which mimic the strategies of divide and control simply perpetuate the putrid teachings of plantation owner Willie Lynch. Recall Willie Lynch, from as far back as 1712, promoted differences as a means of controlling slaves on sugar plantations.

Manley was booted from office in a historic landslide defeat [51-9] on October 30, 1980 by the JLP with Edward Seaga. On October 31, 1980 Jamaica had to essentially start from scratch as if we had just got political independence.

Opportunity

While I was growing up in deep rural St Mary I frequently heard the narrative that we were poor because the big businesses in Richmond, Highgate, and Port Maria were all owned by “Syrians and Chinese”. I remember being told that the ownership of property/wealth throughout Jamaica was the preserve of the ‘big man’ (rich and well-to-do), the upper classes.

Most of my kin were staunch Manley and People’s National Party (PNP) supporters. They were poor. A handful fervently believed that Manley, via his ‘small man-centred polices’, was going to deliver them and Jamaica from the vast inequalities left behind from slavery and colonialism. In that vein, some mistakenly believed that Manley was going to spearhead a massive redistribution of certain Crown lands and specifically redistribute generous acreages owned by a certain large banana producer in St Mary.

That never happened. Some were devastated.

Though I was a young boy, I was conscious enough to realise that life for my immediate family and our neighbours was a hand-to-mouth existence. None of us were lazy. None of us were without ambition. I discovered in later years that what we really lacked were the opportunities to realise our full potential. Pardon me for coining a word, but I believe “Opportunitylessness” is and has been one of the greatest inhibitors of human development in this country.

American poet Langston Hughes, in his seminal poem Harlem, brilliantly captures how opportunitylessness destroys human potential:

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore —

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over —

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”

Opportunitylessness cannot be remedied by mere redistribution of income. The Manley Administration was obsessed with the redistribution of income, not its creation. His social policies and programmes, though well-intentioned, were not cost-effective and could not be sustained without a thriving economy.

Calypsonian and folks philosopher Slinger Francisco, popularly called Mighty Sparrow, in his song No Money No Love, sings:

“We can’t love without money

We can’t make love on hungry belly

Johnny you’ll be the only one I’m dreaming of

You’re my turtle dove, but — no money, no love!”

Manley’s wrong decisions

In 1972 Manley promised that democratic socialism would deliver a better Jamaica for all Jamaicans. Sounds familiar? That is what Dr Peter Phillips is promising if the PNP were to take back Jamaica House. Dr Phillips needs to understand that the outdated policies of what we commonly refer to as the ‘far left’ in politics will not advance inclusive growth. We tried them in the 70s. They failed miserably. Dr Phillips and the PNP want a return to the mass redistribution of resources, minus equal evidence of plans for a massive increased in production. It will not work, because it cannot work. It has not worked anywhere in the world.

These are some of the dire economic consequences of Manley’s time at the wheel:

• The Bank of Jamaica had to print money for the country to survive after the treasury was drained.

• Unemployment increased to a record 27 per cent, aided by the fallout of the make-work projects.

• The Bank of Jamaica ran out of reserves in foreign exchange for the first time, and had to use funds set aside for paying debt.

• This resulted in a severe reduction of imports of raw materials and spare parts, closing down of factories, and increasing unemployment.

• Oil supplies were short, resulting in frequent blackouts and loss of factory time.

• Imported food items were so short that riots erupted at supermarkets when goods arrived.

• Small shops — 14,000 of them — either closed or kept one window open mostly to sell aerated water, Foska oats, and toilet tissue.

• The value of the total production of the economy (gross domestic product [GDP]) in 1980 was 17.5 per cent, less than in 1972, after decreasing every year but one.

• Inflation increased by 250 per cent, peaking at 49.4 per cent in 1978.

• While revenue remained almost constant over the period, expenditure increased by 66 per cent.

• The budget deficit, as a consequence, increased from 3.9 per cent to 17.5 per cent, one of, if not the highest, of any country not at war.

• The total public debt, as a percentage of GDP, increased nearly 500 per cent, creating a crushing burden in debt service.

• The level of investment collapsed by 40 per cent of GDP, and savings by 53 per cent.

• Foreign exchange reserves were wiped out, plunging from positive US$239 million to negative US$549 million.

• Economic growth was negative in seven of the eight years and less than one per cent in the eighth year ( The Gleaner, October 23, 2016).

Manley squandered a golden opportunity to transform Jamaica into the Pearl of the Caribbean. That reality cannot be hidden or successfully denied.

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