WE are just two years shy of celebrating our 50th year of political independence from Britain. When the Union Jack was lowered on August 6, 1962 and the Jamaican flag raised in its place, there was a surge of pride that we could now become the builders of our own destiny. We stepped out boldly, if not brashly, filled with a sense of optimism as to what we could build.
We did not place any limits on our innate capacities to build a great nation; the future beckoned and we were willing - if naively - to place Jamaica on the map and to make of her a nation with which the world would reckon. We were going to forge ahead, no matter the obstacles. If we stumbled, it was not because we had lost that initial vision but that we were confronted with the predilections of the newly independent in seeking to take responsibility for our own lives and destinies.
Despite the initial optimism we felt as a nation, an honest reflection on where we have come over the past 48 years must leave us deeply concerned about our status as a free society and to wonder where all this independence has gone. A further question may be, if we are truly independent, whose independence has it been? That of the vast majority of our people who continue to bear a disproportionate part of the burden for building this society (the have-nots), or that of the few (the haves) who have sought to govern and exploit them in their own thirst for power — political, economic and intellectual power?
We have come to realise, and sometimes shockingly so, that building a strong, independent nation is not predicated on wishful thinking, or on the capricious behaviour of those we have elected over the years to conduct our business. We are far from being a politically mature nation. We have failed to understand the consensus that should exist between the governed and their governors and that which should redound to good governance. We have simply ignored the time-honoured declaration of Thomas Jefferson to which we have to return constantly to remind ourselves of the basic foundation of good government -- governments which function with the consent of the governed. In that Declaration of American Independence, Jefferson made it known in a flash of brilliance which, as it turned out, was a characteristic of his, that governments exist to secure and promote the rights of people and that prominent among these rights is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A nation that has slaughtered close to 2,000 of its people yearly for almost the last decade can hardly be described as a nation that respects the right to life. And I am talking here not only about citizens killing citizens, but extra-judicial killings by agents of the state. As to liberty, how truly free are we to live our lives in the wholesome fashion that Jefferson envisaged? There can be no liberty where there is no justice. Human freedom is constrained by injustice, especially when it is directed to the citizen from the state. When this happens, the citizen is shackled by the predation of the state and this predation is not just limited to the excesses of the state's agents, but by predatory tax laws that prevent him from keeping and using most of what he earns. In summary, we are still not functioning as a just society; we still judge people by how they look and the kind of community in which they reside. The very black among us get a different treatment tending toward injustice than the very brown among us. There is one set of laws for downtown and another for uptown. To use a phrase of the late Ralph Brown in describing socialism, what we have as independence when it comes to justice is "mouthwater" independence.
As to the pursuit of happiness after 48 years of existence as a nation, you can hardly ask one Jamaican how he is doing without getting the dismal response, "Nutten nah gwaan" or some other variant on a misery index. This is as true of those who are making it as it is of those who are barely surviving. Never mind where we are placed by the world as the "third happiest nation". We know in Jamaica life is tough and it is only the truly resilient who make it. It is true that no country can guarantee a person's happiness. Happiness is a function of private initiative and drive deeply riveted in the choices we make. If you squander opportunities that come your way, you cannot blame others for your own misery. For example, there is no law that says you must stay in an unhappy relationship; that you must become addicted to alcohol or other mind-altering substances; that the only way forward in life is to plant a plot of ganja or to become involved in some other nefarious activity. Each one of us lies in the bed we make and this is made worse if you owe three months' hire-purchase payment on it!
While I understand this, governments must create the ambience in which a thriving, energetic citizenry can embark enterprisingly on projects that can improve their lives and those of their families. This is where I think successive governments since independence have failed the Jamaican people. It is to the building of this kind of society that we have to bend our energies. We have wasted a lot of time and lost ground over the past 48 years. We are still a young nation and we can do better. The question is, will we?
stead6655@aol.com
www.drraulston.com
August 11, 2010
jamaicaobserver
