Dear Editor,

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn recently used some adjectives to describe modern Jamaica as she called out civil society on its “silence regarding those resisting arrest”. She was reported as saying, “We are operating in an atmosphere where the old-fashion values of the work ethic — discipline, compliance, civility — is being overwhelmed on occasion by this coarseness and crassness that seems to be the order of the day at every level. And what is so tragic is that even the people who ought to know better are not aware.” (Nationwide News Network 90FM).

The DPP has called on human rights groups, in particular Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), to help educate the public. However, the responsibility of learning civilised behaviour was removed from the education curriculum when the teaching of civics ceased over 40-odd years ago. That means that the buck stops with the Government’s failed policies from the Ministry of Education.

The reason so many who ought to know better were not aware was further undergirded by failure of the PJ Patterson’s values and attitudes initiative as lack of morals lies at the root of our political tribalism and divisiveness.

Financial guru and columnist the late Basil Buck in ‘The consequences of “buttuism” ‘, written as far back as in 1997, described what the DPP now calls coarseness and crassness in the emerging “new Jamaican”. (Sunday Observer, July 20, 1997) It was the buzz word of the talk shows, and was used to define the psychology of the new Jamaican.

In the article Buck identified the new Jamaican as a product of:

*the fears and insecurities of the 1970s and the wealth effect of those fears and uncertainties

*the greed and materialism of the 1980s in an attempt to rebuild wealth lost in the 1970s

* The corruption of the 1990s, with a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption and overconsumption of goods and services as money and objects have become status symbols

He said that “to understand our economic problem and, in particular, our production and foreign exchange problems is to understand the economics that flows out of ‘buttuism’, aided and abetted by our political parties as they fight for power and the glory”.

In short, we are where we are not because of slavery, which was abolished in 1834, but the political dance of futility by Jamaica’s two major political parties — the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party.

In going forward both political parties ought to apologise to the nation for the destruction left in the wake of their fight for power and glory.

Dudley McLean II

Mandeville, Manchester

dm15094@gmail.com