After 60 years of political independence the last thing we can afford as a nation is to listen to people who ought to know better trying to suggest we remain a little unsophisticated, backwater Third World country.

That is how it sounds hearing the people who are jumping all over about the cost of the campaign of Mrs Kamina Johnson Smith, the foreign minister, for the post of secretary general of the Commonwealth Secretariat. They are wrong to treat this issue as mere political grist for the mill.

Looked at the big picture, that is to say, after the blinkers are taken off, the Johnson Smith campaign represents a Jamaica growing in confidence, believing that it can muster global support for an international position of notable significance.

It is yet again an example of the kind of audacity that has propelled us to the pinnacle of world sports as superstars who “nuh watch nuh face”, as we take on the might of countries multiple times our geographical and economic size.

Had Mrs Johnson Smith prevailed in her bid, we suspect, everybody would be singing a different sankey and basking in another instance of how we punch above our weight. Truly it is said that failure is an orphan while success has many parents.

But our memories are short. How soon we forget that it is not the first time that Jamaica has launched a global bid to snag a great international prize — the location of the United Nations (UN) International Seabed Authority (ISA) — in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

The late Ambassador Dudley Thompson spearheaded that fight as foreign minister in the then Michael Manley Administration. It was an even bigger quest because it involved the entire membership of the UN, as against the more limited membership in the British Commonwealth.

But, as a country, we did not quibble about the cost or this made-up problem of lack of transparency. Then it was all about national pride and the clout demonstrated by a small developing State.

When the People’s National Party (PNP) Government changed hands in 1980, the new Edward Seaga Administration did not miss a beat in continuing the campaign, until victory at last in 1983.

Frankly, we were surprised by the relatively small cost of the Johnson Smith campaign, given how much ground was covered and the astronomical cost of running even a tiny public relations campaign in Kingston.

The Government puts the cost at a total of $18.3 million for expenses covering air and ground transportation, COVID-19 tests, meals and accommodation, PR/communications support activities for staging of events such as the launch and engagements with delegations (IT support, printing of documents, photography, food and beverages).

So, unless someone has information that the Government is hiding something egregious from the nation, we should end this suspicion and fishing for a problem that apparently does not exist.

The call for information about private support for the campaign is unworthy because we all know that private donors rarely want their contributions to be publicised. If someone knows of anything corrupt in this regard please share it with the country.

There could have been weaknesses in the campaign, but that is hardly cause for excoriation, and the idea remains a bold one. It is not for nothing that it is said: “Wi likkle but wi tallawah.”