OUTSPOKEN clergyman Reverend Merrick “Al” Miller is pushing for a relaunch of a programme aimed at addressing i
ndiscipline, incivility, and violence in Jamaica.

Miller, who heads Fellowship Tabernacle in St Andrew, told the Jamaica Observer that he is willing to take another shot at the Values and Attitudes Programme launched by then Prime Minister PJ Patterson in 1994 and rebranded the National Transformation Programme (NTP) under a Bruce Golding-led Government in 2009.

“Unfortunately, the values and attitudes campaign has not been carried effectively over the last 10 to 13 years. It started out of a call made by former Prime Minister Patterson, which was passed to Prime Minister [Portia] Simpson Miller. The Government wanted to do it but it had issues to make it happen.

“Then it went to Prime Minister [Bruce] Golding, and we picked it up again and reshaped it into the National Transformation Programme. That got stymied and not much has happened on the national scale since, but we are picking up full stride,” Miller said following the Easter Sunday service at his church.

“We need the full support because we have to rescue our nation. We see all the positives happening for which we have to give thanks, but we all have to go out there and take back the communities, the inner cities. It runs through the culture where we are no longer sufficiently our brother’s keeper. Living is about loving and loving is about giving. What we have to do to restore that, we have to re-engage and we have to do it together,” added Miller.

He argued that Jamaicans are living in a “dog-eat-dog” situation in which “it is every man for himself, gouging what he can get and not considering what he can give”.

According to Miller, Jamaica is in serious trouble as the country has deteriorated spiritually over time.

He charged the business and political leaders of the nation to commit to move beyond personal and party politicking and begin to act as though the nation and the people come first.

“We must become the ones who fight the cause of the people against injustice of every form. If we don’t do that, then we cannot help the nation to get back on track. That’s why I am getting back out there with that National Transformation Programme.

“We want Government, we want private sector and all groups to engage. As the people of God we have to bear some of that responsibility because we have personalised the message of salvation. We have personalised it to the detriment of society, to the detriment of our strategising to obey the commands of Jesus,” said Miller.

“The set paths are principles in the word, like loving one another, honouring and respecting one another. Those fundamental values are a part of the set path where when we follow it a nation succeeds. That is why the word says righteousness exalts a nation, but if we reject it, it will be to our own detriment.

“Right now, in the nation, what we loosely call the Church must arise, take her place to impact the behaviour, the culture, and thinking of the nation by instilling the fundamental values and hope to the people. We must get out back in the communities and engage again with a message of hope,” Miller declared.

In launching the Values and Attitudes Programme in 1994, Patterson had dubbed it an attempt to restore the wholesome values and positive attitudes which are the important legacy of a people and essential to our progress as a nation.

With the Jamaica Labour Party taking control of the Government in 2007, the programme died a slow death before the 2009 launch of a similar scheme, the NTP, which was dubbed Fresh Start Jamaica under the Golding Administration.

At that launch Governor General Sir Patrick Allen issued a challenge to the country to seek to recapture the things that money cannot buy.

“I think we can all agree that in our rush to modernisation
— and modernise we must
— we did not emphasise and safeguard, as much as we should, some of the basic values that define us as a nation,” Sir Patrick said at the launch where Miller was announced as the national director of the programme.

Miller walked away from the programme in 2010 after he was charged with harbouring a fugitive and perverting the course of justice when he was held in the company of Jamaica’s then most wanted, Christopher “Dudus” Coke. The clergyman was subsequently found guilty and fined $1 million or 12 months in prison.

The NTP was buried in 2012 when the Simpson Miller Administration made no allocation for it in the budget after the Government had spent more than $32 million on it in the preceding three years.

Now Miller wants to resurrect the programme, which had been described as a non-partisan initiative involving the State, the Church, the private sector, and civil society, with a focus on moral and social interventions, inculcating 12 select national core values and attitudes necessary for individual prosperity, community development, and sustainable growth of the national economy.