One of the benefits of retirement is that it allows for introspection on the time spent in active engagement in a profession or line of work. These moments may come momentarily while you are actively employed, but once you withdraw from the hustle and bustle you realise that you can now find time for such reflections.

If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that there are issues you could have handled better, and you will regret the things that you did that were clearly wrong and which might have brought a great deal of pain and suffering to people, intentionally or unintentionally. You may feel remorseful and be moved to apologise for your actions. If given the opportunity you would want to do so or continue in calcified arrogance believing that you did your best and if people suffered as a result of your decisions, so what.

These sentiments are particularly important if your line of work was of such importance that it had the potential to alter people’s lives in significant ways. The work of a prime minister comes readily to mind. So does that of a finance minister.

Dr Omar Davies, former Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Western, served as the minister of finance in the P J Patterson-led People’s National Party (PNP) Administration. It was an uninterrupted 14 years of service, which made him the longest-serving finance minister that the country has had.

There are two events that stand out in people’s mind whenever the name Omar Davies is uttered in Jamaica: Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) and the “run wid it” speech he gave in which he outlined that, under his watch, the fiscal deficit was deliberately allowed to run so as not to stop key projects in which the Government was involved and thus cauterise the PNP’s ability to stay in power.

The “correction” of that reckless decision by way of heavy taxation and high interest rates, which eventually led to a collapse of the financial sector, resulted in great economic pain for the people of Jamaica .

Recently, Davies went to an event in his former constituency and claimed that the present Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government was the most corrupt and incompetent Government that he has ever encountered in his “long life”. Knowing his antecedents, I was completely blown away by his selective amnesia regarding his own time in office. I saw him as a man trying to thread a needle in a dark room, but people will not be fooled. Neither will they forget the trauma of his years as finance minister. In a previous piece I wrote of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that many are still suffering, especially as a result of the Finsac debacle overseen by him as the finance minister.

The scandals that plagued the Patterson Administration in its almost 19 years of undisturbed governance are still etched in the minds of Jamaicans, especially those who suffered most. One can be sure that the events leading up to Finsac are deeply embedded in the minds of the black entrepreneurial class which collapsed under the weight of high interest rates, pernicious taxation policies, and the high rates of internal and external borrowing which became an albatross around the neck of the economy.

When it came to borrowing, the private sector was literally crowded out of the market because of the Government’s insatiable appetite for borrowing heavily to support recurring expenditure. Growth in the economy stagnated and every signpost was flashing red to indicate that we were heading for an economic calamity.

Many of us warned the Government of the impending economic doom, but the strident voices of party hacks and others whose snouts were deeply buried in the hog trough of government largesse attempted to silence our voices and our pens.

I remember this like it happened yesterday. In my long years of writing letters, articles, and columns in national newspapers, to the best of my knowledge, from the time I started, I am the only person living today who has been doing so on a consistent basis to the present time. As such, there are many things that I have learnt from public commentary on national matters.

When it comes to the economy, I have learnt, not from any economic textbook but from the university of hard knocks, that you ignore certain economic laws to your own peril because in the end these laws will take their course and you will be severely burnt. Under Davies, the Jamaican economy went up in flames in the 1990s. We are just now trying to dig ourselves out of the ashes of this economic mismanagement.

I am sure that Dr Davies would want us to forget this sad episode which occurred under his watch — to forget bedrock companies which buckled under the weight of heavy debt, the high cost of doing business, and the often acrimonious rhetoric that pitted labour against the holders of capital, which often bordered on the obnoxious vomit of socialist malice.

The lives that were wrecked as a result of foolish economic policies; the ways in which businesses and people’s personal properties were sold out cheaply to a foreigner without the owners being given an opportunity to save them cry out in shame against Davies’ economic policies. I know of big men, at least I considered them so when their businesses were thriving, who were full of life and patriotism, but were broken by Finsac. Today, families bear the scars of the obvious mishandling of their assets by the Government. I remember a couple in Mandeville that committed suicide.

Davies’ intentions regarding Finsac might not have been corrupt, but corrupt streams flowed from it which, in his most contemplative moments, he cannot deny. This is why I believe that the present Government is doing the country a disservice by not allowing citizens access to a comprehensive assessment of what happened. As far as I know, there has not been any conclusive report given to the country from the commission of enquiry into this sad saga.

Dr Clarke and the Andrew Holness Administration owe it to the country and the remnants of the still suffering to say what really happened. I well remember the passion of the former Minister of Finance Audley Shaw in initiating the commission, saying that he would leave no stone unturned in getting to the truth. Are we to understand, Prime Minister Holness, that this was all blather, a ‘bag a mout’?

Contrary to what some may think, I have no personal gripe against Dr Davies. I have never met him in the flesh and what I know of him is what I have observed from his persona as a public servant. The late Donald Buchanan once told me in a light conversation that Davies was a “domino king”, which could be saying something about his affability. I have no reason to think that he is a dishonourable person. In fact, it is still my opinion that he did not corrupt himself in office. But he was a member of the Government when serious charges of corruption were being investigated and there was never any public acknowledgement from him regarding these matters.

What is clear is that he is entitled to his opinions but not to his own facts. Facts are stubborn things and they are what they are. If after so many years of retirement he feels constrained to wade back into the public space as he did two Sundays ago, then he should do so with facts, fully recognising the road over which he himself has travelled.

Between Finsac and “run wid it” there is an extremely bumpy road. It is regrettable that the benefits of retirement do not seem to be serving the former minister well, at least in his latest recollections. If he cannot be a purveyor of truth he would be well advised to say little, lest he be seen as a hypocrite. It is one thing to have your credibility degraded in active employment, it is quite another to see it ravaged when deserved rest should be helping one to be more comfortable and wiser.

Meanwhile, growth in the economy continues apace despite the depredations of the worst pandemic to have hit the world in the last 100 years. It is not in the nature of Opposition parties to fulsomely praise the Government for any growth in the economy, but there is no doubt that the reckless, fiscal imprudence of the past is being held under “heavy manners” by this Government.

Again, economic laws that provide growth will yield results if you do not tinker with them or try to bend them to some expedient end. The Government must continue to hold fast to this road and ignore the noise that would force it to return to a path that all well-thinking Jamaicans are agreed we should never return.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storm, Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life, and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.