The CCJ and "Nationalism"

In a Letter to the Editor last week, JLP leader Andrew Holness sought to defend his party's position on the Caribbean Court of Justice, the CCJ, saying he opposes the regional court because he is a nationalist.  He writes, "I feel compelled to affirm that I am a nationalist; always have been, always will be.  For me, it's Jamaica first.  I am unapologetic in the view that our priority as a people should be to consider and pursue that which is in Jamaica's best interest at all times."  Mr. Holness is trying to make it seem as though the CCJ and Jamaica's best national interest are mutually exclusive, when in fact accepting the CCJ is in the national interest, and therefore, a nationalist objective.  Accepting the CCJ is putting Jamaica first.

Because of the small size of Commonwealth Caribbean populations, it is in our best interest to collaborate with others in the region with shared interests and objectives, thereby easing the financial burden.  The University of the West Indies is one such example, where we have collaborated to educate our children and build our nations.  UWI, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have passed through its various campuses, is the region's greatest success story.  The CCJ can be another.

When the idea for a regional court was initially proposed--ironically by the JLP's own Hugh Lawson Shearer in 1970--it was acknowledged that going it alone would be a difficult and expensive road.  Shearer saw the utility of sharing resources for a regional final appellate court.  That logic still exists today.  Jamaica is in no better position today to establish its own final court.

In June last year, DPP Paula Llewelyn described the dismal state of the judicial system. "The system is underresourced and overburdened," she said.  "You must be prepared [to] give more than a gentle hint to the policy makers that, notwithstanding the tight fiscal space, try to find the resources so that more can be put into the justice system.  Where are we going to get the courtrooms and the court staff to try the cases?  You don't have the staff, the number of prosecutors, court reporters and judges to do that.  So what is happening is that the system is almost turning in on itself."

In October last year, the outcome of the Boulevard murder case brought this sorry state of affairs into perspective.  The trial of Corporal Louis Lynch and Constable Paul Edwards was discontinued on the basis that the matter was too expensive to pursue.  The DPP said it had been very expensive for the State retry the policemen because the Government had to pay millions of dollars to bring five overseas witnesses to the first trial.  Ms. Llewelyn explained, "I spoke to the Permanent Secretary at length and she indicated that $20 million... in light of all the competing claims on the budget at the Ministry of Justice, it just would not be possible at this time.  I don't have the luxury of being able to think of justice without the resources."

Yet, the JLP insists that Jamaica should pursue its own final court, even without giving any indication of the cost or resources it would require.  Some argue that governments often find money for things they want to do; however, Ms. Llewelyn's description of the systematic neglect of the justice system under both parties over the years does not lend confidence to such a supposition.  Additionally, the tight fiscal reality is such that public sector workers are being offered no more than a 5% salary increase after several years of stagnant wages, doctors are complaining daily about the state of the public health system, and there are insufficient funds to finance the courts that exist. Yet the JLP wants us to believe that money will magically appear to create and run a new court.  Even when another perfectly good court in the region, that we've already paid to join, already exists!

Since my radio commentary, the JLP's communication officer Nesta Morgan has pointed out that the party was not proposing this local alternative be implemented now.  I appreciate the clarification; however, this position is even more worrisome.  The JLP is insisting upon "economic independence" before contemplating changing the final court.  It is gravely unfortunate that they have tied justice to such a vague and idealistic goal.  How is economic independence to be measured?  When will it be attained?  In the five decades since political independence, this goal has remained elusive, and it may well continue to evade us for decades more.  In the meantime, the CCJ sits as a viable alternative, a wasted opportunity.

Use CCJ until a Jamaican final court is viable

Dr. Paul Ashley has made a sensible proposition.  In his Sunday Gleaner op-ed, he writes, "There can be no serious objection to any nation state aspiring to have its own judicial system located within its territorial boundaries.  However, the manifestation of that aspiration has to be based on the requisite infrastructure being in place and its general public having trust and confidence in the supporting institutions.

"Both parties will agree that Jamaica is not yet at that stage.  But this should not prevent us from moving in the general direction by de-linking from the colonial masters and placing reliance on others with a shared colonial experience and similar national aspirations.  There can be no harm in replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ and at some future period assessing the performance of such a court."

This is an idea I can support.  Leave the Privy Council and use the CCJ until Jamaica is ready to establish its own final court.  Since Jamaica is clearly not ready now, why delay or deny justice to those who seek it in the interim?  Why continue to subject our people to the exorbitant costs and prohibitive access to justice at the Privy Council, when a regional alternative exists that can dramatically improve access?

There is no good reason to oppose the CCJ.  It is a good court with qualified and respected judges who are insulated from political interference in a way not even the Privy Council is.  It is an affordable option for both the government and the people of Jamaica, and will increase access to justice.  The JLP is wrong for opposing it.

Je Suis Humaine!

Something happened twelve days ago that the world has largely ignored.  On Thursday, April 2, gunmen stormed Garissa University College in Kenya and murdered 147 people.  One hundred and forty two of them were students, promising university students like our own young people at UWI, UTECH, NCU and others.  They may have been studying fields as diverse as engineering, law, medicine, English Literature, History, Math, Biology, Chemistry and Art.  Young people just like the 350 who packed into UWI's Assembly Hall last Thursday to watch a man with a Muslim father from Kenya, Barack Obama.  One hundred and forty two of Kenya's future leaders, slaughtered.  Seventy-nine others seriously injured.  Over 700 students were taken hostage, the Christians killed, the survivors traumatized and psychologically impaired for the rest of their lives.  The university is now closed indefinitely.  Survivors say they do not want to return.  And who can blame them?

The killing is attributed to the militant terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, said to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda.  It was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy, and the country's second deadliest overall.  It was more deadly than the 2002 attacks in Mombasa, the 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall, last year's bus bombings in Nairobi, and 12 times more deadly than January's attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.  Yet, no one is saying Je Suis Kenya.

In Jamaica, we were so distracted the past two weeks by the visit of President Obama,
that we didn't notice the massacre in the country of his father, at a university a star like him may well have attended had he been raised in Kenya.  Many of us are too quick to dismiss things that occur outside our small spheres of reality, our little island bubble.  I'm very tempted to claim global apathy because the victims were Black.  And worse, Black Africans, often the lowest of the low in global significance.  I only go as far as saying "tempted", because it is also true that where violence is the norm, people become desensitized.  In Jamaica, 1005 people were murdered last year.  Our murder rate has long been at civil war proportions, but what would shock those in other countries barely makes the news here.

Today, April 14, also marks one year since Boko Haram kidnapped 270 school girls in Nigeria.  When they were taken from school in Chibok last year, no one seemed to care.  The Nigerian government wasn't even looking for them.  American news was busy covering other things.  Yet, when the attack on Charlie Hebdo occurred, everyone was quick with a response.  Nigeria's own President, Goodluck Jonathan, took mere hours to issue a statement condemning the attack, but ignored the Chibok girls for weeks, refusing to even acknowledge that it had happened.  It wasn't until several weeks later when the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls began trending on social media, that many finally paid attention.  The global media took notice.  Troops were supposedly sent in to find and rescue the girls.  Talk shows talked about why they hadn't been talking about it before.  But even that was fleeting.  It's been a year.  The Chibok girls are still not home, and most of us had forgotten all about them.

In response to the Garissa University attack, a social media campaign based in Kenya created the hashtag #147-not-just-a-number.  I don't think it made as much of an impact as the organizers would have liked.  Kenyans are now living in fear.  On Sunday, one student at the University of Nairobi in the capital died in a stampede that left 140 others injured.  A power transformer exploded on the campus, causing panicked students and teachers to flee, fearing another attack.  Nightly curfews have been imposed from 6:30 pm to 6:30 am in Garissa and surrounding counties.

It is time for us to start paying attention to the world around us.  The world is more connected than ever.
There is no reminder more sobering than last weekend's deportation of a 15-year-old Jamaican boy from Suriname, where he was said to be attempting to travel to Turkey, cross the border into Syria and join ISIS.  From there, it is feared he would have become radicalized, traveled back to Jamaica, and carried out an assigned mission.  Whatever that may have been, I shudder to think.

Terrorist groups are diversifying their appeal and their reach.  The faces of terrorism are changing.  Most of us are still visualizing terrorists as people who look like Osama bin Laden, olive-skinned, turban wearing Arabs.  But Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab have overtaken Al Qaeda in terms of global significance. And ISIS is no cave dwelling Al Qaeda.  They're a technologically sophisticated web with tentacles anywhere the Internet can reach, filled with young people searching for a cause, and black faces.  Their methods demonstrate intelligence and high levels of education.  Young people with cutting edge skills in videography and editing, planning, logistics, webmastery.  Some of them look just like you and me. That 15-year-old boy from St. Mary is one of us, but he could also have easily become one of them, and that is frightening beyond belief.

Garissa, Kenya was considered one of the safest places in East Africa.  It housed both military barracks and police headquarters.  Americans felt safe inside the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  Jamaicans feel safe on our borderless island nation.  But who needs a plane now when terrorists are able to hide among us because they ARE us?

Je suis Kenya! Je suis Nigeria! Je suis Jamaica! Je suis humaine!

The Media is Under-reporting Crime

      I’m tired of the constant criticisms of the media regarding our coverage of crime.  People just love to criticize the media… the media’s biased, the media’s too negative, the media’s this, the media’s that.  Much of the criticism is levelled on the basis of perception rather than facts.  It’s time to lay to rest the oft-repeated criticism that the media assigns too much prominence to crime, at the expense of other types of stories.  It’s simply not true.
I decided to do a content analysis of our own news here at Nationwide for the month of December.  I examined the headlines in our flagship news programme, Nationwide at 5, between December 1 and 24.  A total of 100 news items made the weekday headlines during that period.  The #1 story in December on NNN was the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry, with 19%.  Stories about the economy were second at 17%, followed closely by business stories at 15%.  Crime stories were the fourth most prominent in our news, at 11%.

     Additionally, upon examination of the types of crime stories covered by NNN during the period reviewed, it was evident that the majority of these stories were not cut-and-dried crime stories.  Most of them had some greater significance, as opposed to being simple reports about so-and-so killed so-and-so.  Here is a brief description of some of the stories I included in the crime category for this study:

• PNP Councillor Venesha Phillips shot at
• JLP caretaker condemns attack on councillor Phillips
• Knife attack at Sav-la-mar lockup
• 1 of 4 abducted women found
• Vybz Kartel possibly to be questioned over Cory Todd shooting
• Government websites hacked
• Body in Clarendon death squad case to be exhumed
• Break in at Parliament
• Policeman killed in Manchester
• 14 year old murdered
• Drugs seized

     I don’t have the specific crime statistics for December, but there were 1005 murders committed across Jamaica in 2014.  That works out to an average of 84 per month, not including other types of violent crimes such as shootings, rapes and robberies.  We reported 11 in our headlines, including only 3 murders.  The media is in fact under-reporting crime.
     Now before anyone says well that is just NNN, I also examined the Gleaner.  I looked at all their front page stories between December 1, 2014, and January 11, 2015—a total of 104 stories.  The vast majority of Gleaner stories during that period were on social issues, such as Sunday’s headline about the alarming number of divorces, or so-and-so needs assistance for surgery.  Social issues represented 20% of the Gleaner’s top stories between December and January.  Second was business at 12%, while crime was third at 8%.  Politics followed closely at 7%, and stories about the church represented 6% of the Gleaner’s coverage.

     The nine crime stories in the Gleaner included a story about a 10-year-old held in a lotto scam probe, the police commissioner’s crime review for 2014, two 16-year-olds held for the murder of a retired matron, credit card fraud at gas stations, lesbians reportedly targeted, the Safe Schools programme, extortion clean up downtown, and a crackdown on stolen cars.  Again, not cut-and-dried crime reporting, and also not the sensationalism that we are often accused of.
     Having had the benefit of working in a newsroom in another country for several years, as well as anchoring a Caribbean news programme for two years, Jamaica is not nearly as guilty of sensationalizing nor over reporting crime as is believed, or as compared to other countries in the region.  In Belize, for example, every murder makes the news, and it almost always leads.  Belize’s murder rate is alarming, coming in at number-4 in the world in 2014, just behind Jamaica.  Of course, because of its much smaller population, even though the murder rate is almost comparable, the actual number of murders is a lot less.
     Still, the treatment of murder is also a lot different.  Belizean news is notorious for showing gory images of dead bodies.  It is not unusual to turn on the nightly news and see a bloody body on the street, in a drain, slumped over a veranda, still oozing blood from the clearly visible gunshot wounds.  Of course followed by an interview with the grieving mother forcing words though her tears.  And then an interview with the lead detective about what he or she believes happens.  It is the same in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Gruesome images are broadcast and published uncensored.  I’m not supporting that type of reporting.  The media in those countries have been strongly criticized for those strategies, and I personally have never been a fan of that type of journalism.  I’m just saying that Jamaica really is not that bad.
     I remember when I first began working in a newsroom in Jamaica, that was at CVM TV.  It was probably my first week on the job and I was going through the police reports.  I came across three separate murder stories and instinctively began working on them.   I was shocked when none of them made the news.
     Another early experience in Jamaica that I remember vividly was being sent on an assignment to March Pen Road.  I was casually told by my editor to collect a bullet proof vest at the security gate.  I was alarmed, and even though—thankfully—nothing happened, it hit home to me how real the crime situation was and still is in Jamaica.  Yet, contrary to public perception, it does not get the proportional prominence in the news that it deserves.  That may be in large part because it’s been so bad for so long that many Jamaicans suffer from crime fatigue.  We just don’t want to hear about it any more.
     But should we simply sweep the crime issue under the rug just because people are tired of it?  If crime continues to be one of the top issues facing the nation, does it not deserve proportional attention in the news?  I took a look at some of the Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson polls over the past few years.  Between 2006 and 2010, Jamaicans ranked crime as the number-1 issue facing the country.  Crime fell to the number-2 issue in 2011, behind unemployment.  It may be more than a coincidence that a downward trend in crime began in 2010 and has continued to this day.  Jamaicans’ concern about crime has fallen as the numbers have fallen, however, crime still remains among the top 3 issues of concern.
     My point is this—you can’t continue to say that crime is such a big national problem, yet complain that the media is giving it too much attention.  Crime deserves the coverage and prominence that Jamaican media assign to it, and more!  There are media houses in Jamaica that don’t cover crime at all, as policy.  Others under-report, as evident by the content analysis I’ve presented this morning.  This is not a good thing, no matter how desensitized and crime fatigued we have become.  The media must continue to shine a light on this major issue, until we’re no longer in the top five, or ten or one-hundred countries in the world for violent crime.  Until a murder is once again such an extraordinary and shocking thing that no one questions its relevance in the news.

And that's MY perspective!

Who is the #ArticulateMinority?

Who is the articulate minority?  The phrase was coined by Environment Minister and Chairman of the governing People's National Party, Robert Pickersgill, to describe Twitter users commenting on the NHT/Outameni scandal.  Pickersgill is quoted as saying that ordinary Jamaicans don't know anything about the social media website, and that Jamaicans on Twitter are an articulate minority, who're politically motivated.  The comments have not gone down well with social media users, who've used the forum to criticize the senior Cabinet Minsiter.

There are no official statistics available on the Internet for the number of Jamaicans who use the social media website, Twitter.  An executive from Twitter told one social media researcher (@corvedacosta) in July, that the number was somewhere around 35-thousand,  about the size of a large constituency.  However, another researcher (@top5jamaica) puts the figure at around 82-thousand, which is the number of Facebook users in Jamaica who also have a Twitter account linked to their Facebook page.  The number could be much higher, considering many do not have the two accounts linked.  By either estimate, it is indeed a fraction of Jamaica's estimated 2-point-7 million population.  Many more Jamaicans use Facebook, an estimated 760-thousand up to January this year, according to Facebook's advertising analytics.

Yet, Twitter users are particularly influential.  The site is designed to allow members to easily share someone else's posts by re-tweeting with the click of a button.  According to the Twitter-tracking website, Keyhole, the hashtag #Outameni was tweeted over 552 times by 270 users in the past 48 hours.  Those messages reached almost 600-thousand people.  The tracker does not count how many times Outameni was tweeted about since October 30, when the scandal broke.  The hashtag #ArticulateMinority was tweeted 537 times in the past two days, reaching an estimated 662 thousand people.  A story on the Observer's website about Pickersgill's comments has been viewed over 18-thousand times, and shared on social media nearly 200 times.  A third of those shares are on Twitter.

Minister Pickersgill does have a Twitter account, @bobbyp425, with129 followers.  He's tweeted only 51 times, and his last message was in July 2012.  Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller (@PSimpsonMiller) has just over 3-thousand followers, and last tweeted on October 5.  While Opposition leader Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) has nearly 9-thousand Twitter followers, and last tweeted this morning. That message read, "Any politician that ignores or brushes off the articulate minority shows a high level of disregard for those who choose to express their opinions."  He continued, "I urge every Jamaican on Twitter to continue making your voice heard. Some of us are listening. I am listening."   One of those messages was retweeted 45 times.

According to the 2014 Global Information Technology Report published by the World Economic Forum, nearly half of all Jamaicans are online.  In a survey by the Director of Caribbean Institute of Media and Communications, CARIMAC, Professor Hopeton Dunn in 2011, 72-percent of Jamaicans with Internet access said they used social media.  That was three years ago.  Social media has been steadily growing in Jamaica since, with more and more users creating profiles on the popular websites daily. Telecoms companies Digicel and LIME both offer mobile data packages tailored  specifically towards social media users for as low as $50 a day. "Ordinary Jamaicans" are aware of Twitter.

Using the conservative estimate of 35 thousand Twitter users in Jamaica, Jamaicans on Twitter represent a larger constituency than Minister Pickersgill's division of North West St. Catherine, which had 31,570 registered voters as of May 2014. Twitter users are influential shapers of social opinion, and if they are as articulate as Minister Pickersgill suggests, he may be keen to consider them Jamaica's 64th constituency, the Twitter constituency. Maybe then he will get more followers.

And THAT'S my perspective.

Why a man CAN rape his wife

Opinions about marital rape appear to have split along gender lines.  Men argue that they should be entitled to have sex with their wives whenever it suits their fancy, for what else is the purpose or benefit of marriage, if not to have consistent access to sex that is also sanctified by God?  Women argue that they should have the right to say no, even to their husbands.  Men are pleased to quote scripture pointing out that a marriage is union in which two become one, and of course there's the old adage, "What's yours is mine."  Women, however, would like to think that they maintain control over their bodies even in marriage.

What both sides of the argument miss is the difference between sex and rape.  The discussion about marital rape is not about a man's right to have sex with his wife, nor is it about a woman's right to say no honey, not tonight.  It bemuses me how the issue of sex has usurped the conversation about rape, when rape has absolutely nothing to do with sex.  A man does not rape because he wants sex, for there are obviously much easier ways of obtaining it.  A man rapes to assert power and dominance, to humiliate, to hurt and to punish.  While the objective of sex is pleasure and procreation, the objective of rape is pain and power, so although the physical act of penetration is the same, the psychological act is diametrically different.  A woman knows the difference between being raped and having sex, just a child knows or is taught the difference between a good touch and a bad touch.  One is innocent and welcome; the other is a crime.

Rape is an act of violence.  In a relationship, it is akin to domestic violence.   There are men who use rape, just as they would a beating, as a method of physically asserting their dominance in the relationship, while simultaneously reminding the woman of "her place".  If a man beats up his girlfriend and then forces her to have sex with him against her will--for few women would want to have sex after being beaten--could he not be charged with assault and rape?  If a man beats up his wife and then forces her to have sex with him, are those not the same crimes?  Should he not be charged with both assault and rape?  Or should, as one gentleman asserted to me, the wife simply accept the rape as part of the beating?

Under the Sexual Offences Act 2009, marital rape is confined to very specific situations.  A husband can only be accused of raping his wife if they are separated, a divorce proceeding is pending, a restraint order has been issued against him, or if he knowingly suffers from a sexually transmitted infection.  These conditions should be removed to allow for a charge of rape even when the marriage is in tact.

During the debate on marital rape in the House of Representatives, former Justice Minister Delroy Chuck posited that a charge of marital rape would result in the immediate collapse of the marriage, and that the possibility of reconciliation would be zero.  This is not necessarily the case, although in my opinion, it ought to be.  If marital rape is viewed through the context of domestic violence, it is immediately evident that many women, even after reporting their husbands to the police for domestic violence, return to the abusive home. The possibility for reconciliation, therefore, does exist, usually after the husband apologizes and vows never to do it again.  Relationships are complicated.

There is also the argument that marital rape should not be criminalized because could allow vindictive wives to lie about their husbands raping them.  The possibility of the complainant lying about her alleged abuser has always been a concern in the discussion about rape.  Indeed, there are men whose lives have been irreparably damaged due to false accusations of rape against them; however, no one has ever argued that because of this liability, rape should be decriminalized.  Likewise, this is not a solid argument against the expanded criminalization of marital rape.

It is time that we advance the discussion about marital rape beyond the assertion that what happens in a married couple's bedroom is their business.  It is evident that sexual abuse within a relationship and even a marriage is a legitimate issue, and although there are those who would prefer to ignore even physical domestic violence, those among us who are familiar with the consequences of abuse within a family, should not allow this to be swept aside.

And that's MY perspective.

Taxing Taxation

            Is it just me?  Couldn’t be!  I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels fool-fool for paying taxes.

            According to figures from the Private Sector Working Group, PSWG, only about 28% percent of Jamaicans pay personal income tax, PAYE.  A hefty 25% of my pay goes to the government every month, and that’s not including the other things I see deducted on my payslip, like NIS, NHT, Education Tax and others.  I often fantasize about the wonderful things I would do with that money if I didn’t have to pay taxes.  But alas!  To pay or not to pay is not an option.  Taxes have automatically been deducted from my salary every month in every job I’ve ever held in Jamaica, even when I was making starvation wages at my very first job.

            So how come so many people don’t pay income tax?  It couldn’t be that they don’t have income.  It also couldn’t be that they’re all employed in the “informal” sector.  These are legitimate businesses that either are deducting the taxes from their employees’ salaries and not paying it forward to the government (like the state-owned JUTC did with NIS payments!), or the businesses, although registered, are simply not in the tax system at all.  Considering that according to the PSWG, only about 3000 out of 60,000 registered businesses in Jamaica pay Corporate Income Tax (CIT), the latter seems more likely in most cases.  The fact that just 5% of businesses pay CIT is shocking!  Certainly, if I was among the 5%, I’d feel the fool for paying.  Even though it’s the right thing to do, I’d feel like I was duped.

            But it’s impossible for this level of corporate irresponsibility to continue without government collusion, for how can you be registered as a business but not registered at the tax department?  The state won’t even license your car if you don’t first buy insurance, so why isn’t that same duality applied to businesses and tax registration?  Do businesses have licenses?  I’m not sure, but it should be mandatory that to get your business license renewed, you have to show tax compliance.

            On the municipal level, I don’t think I should have to pay taxes to the state/local authority.  My little community is virtually self-governed.  A street rep collects $500 from me every month, and I don’t mind paying because I can actually see where the money goes.  The men of my community bought the equipment and built a playground for the kids last month.  A while back, the community erected speed bumps and street lights with no assistance from the central or municipal government.  Regular bushing is also done with my little monthly contribution. 

In essence, this is the concept of taxation—everyone pitching together for the greater good of the community.  However, when citizens feel like they’re not seeing that greater good, or that they’re bearing the burden because others aren’t paying their fair share, people begin to perceive taxes as exploitative and unfair.  If I didn’t see the weekly work in my community, I doubt I would hand over my $500, but I don’t have that option when it comes to legislated taxes such as PAYE and GCT.  If I felt like the street rep was only coming to my house every month and my neighbours weren’t paying their dues, I’d likewise be reluctant to pay, in which  case, I’d be cutting off my nose to spite my face, since none of us would benefit from the services and there would be no park.  That would truly be a shame. 

However, many in Jamaica ask, what has the government ever done for me?  How do we benefit from paying taxes, especially when contracts are awarded to a favoured few and tax dollars squandered inefficiently *cough—JDIP—cough*.  The four major things one expects from a government are educating our children, taking care of us when we’re sick, protecting us, and keeping our roads/streets navigable.  Yet, those who can afford it send their children to Prep Schools and fly out or attend private hospitals for medical attention.  The really wealthy have private security, so all that’s left for government is maintaining the roads *cough—JDIP—cough*.  No wonder many of these people feel they’re not obligated to pay taxes, and so, they simply don’t.

And that’s MY perspective.

The Power Problem: Lessons from Belize on Electricity Monopoly

This article was published in the Sunday Gleaner on September 4, 2011 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110904/focus/focus2.html .  Thought I'd post it, considering JPS's announcement of plans for a US$600million LNG power plant

     As the complaints about power company JPS crescendo and pressure mounts on the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), it’s like a case of déjà vu.  Just a few years ago, Belize went through a very similar experience—a series of events that began with a flood of complaints about the monopoly power company, Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), and ended with the nationalization of the company just two months ago on June 21.  I use the word “ended” tenuously, as the nationalization by no stretch means the country’s electricity woes are over, nor does it necessarily mean light bills are coming down. 

     Between 2005 and 2008, I cohosted one of the country’s most popular call-in programs, Wake Up Belize.  BEL and the cost of electricity was consistently at the top of the agenda, beside crime and politics, and was always guaranteed to spark a heated conversation and a flurry of calls.  Listeners would present copies of their light bills, saying they’ve tried everything to conserve, yet the amount due continued to escalate each month.  Other times, they complained that they had been unfairly disconnected, or that they were forced to pay for power that they did not consume.   Sound familiar? 

     The issue was of such concern that it became a priority of the Dean Barrow administration upon gaining power in March 2008.  In April, Barrow appointed John Avery to head the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).  Avery was a former employee of BEL, but more importantly, one of its staunchest and most public critics.  He was convinced that the power company was overcharging customers and making too much profit.  In May, Avery and the PUC rejected BEL’s application for a 13% rate increase.  In June, they forced the power company to deliver a BZ$10.3 million (J$432.6 million) rebate to its customers for what it felt was “unauthorised, unjustified or ill advised spending by BEL in past years”.  Then in February of 2009, the PUC ordered BEL to reduce electricity bills by an average of 15%. 

     In making the tariff calculations, Avery slashed BEL’s rate of return from the usual 10-15% to just 8½%.  At a press conference, he told reporters, “The biggest concern is that while everybody else has to be tightening their belts and suffering from the cost that we are all experiencing right now, the increases, BEL should at least forego a little of the huge profits they’ve been reporting.”

Naturally, consumers were elated by what they perceived as someone finally standing up to the BEL behemoth.  BEL, however, challenged the decisions in the courts, and began warning of massive blackouts if it was unable to get the requested rates.  Three years of public bickering and legal battles between the PUC and BEL climaxed in May of this year.  In BEL’s annual report for 2010, presented at this year’s AGM, CEO Lyn Young is quoted as saying, "For the last three years it seems like the PUC has misconstrued its responsibility to balance the interest of the consumer and the Company….the PUC…seems obsessed with destroying what we have built over the last thirty years."  Two weeks later, Prime Minister Barrow announced that BEL, claiming to be unable to meet its debt obligations, was essentially bankrupt.  According to Barrow, Young asked him to mandate the PUC to grant “an almost unlimited rate increase”.  Barrow refused, and two days later, government announced it would take over the company.  The decision was expedited through both houses of parliament in just one day, and became a reality on June 21.  Although the company is already in government hands, the final amount to be paid to BEL’s owner, Canadian company Fortis, is undetermined. 

     It remains to be seen what the GOB will do with BEL.  The scene surrounding the company has been relatively quiet since the takeover.  There are no indications government is interested in selling the utility, and there’s also no word on what will be its strategy in managing the power company.  Will they be able to do what Fortis claimed it was unable to do with the approved rates?  Or will the new owners find that Fortis was right after all, and that the current rates are unsustainable?  And what role will the PUC now play in regulating BEL? 

     Belize has chosen the controversial route of nationalization to deal with our countries’ common problem, a route that over the years has been vilified by those in international financial circles.  Developing countries have been convinced that governments are unable to run companies, a school of thought—some would say an agenda—that led to mass and almost simultaneous privatization of utilities in the developing world in the late 1980s and early 90s.  When it comes to utilities, however, electricity and water have become vital to not just development, but also life.  Perhaps, then, private companies, motivated by profit and self-interest, are not the best ones to be in charge of these essentials.  On the other hand, governments have a social responsibility that private companies don't have, which, some argue, makes them a less than ideal business owner.  However, if Prime Minister Barrow can truly make BEL’s management autonomous, the nationalization could work and be beneficial to the people of Belize.  Mr. Barrow has said there will be no political interference with BEL's management, but with an election due in 2013, and the cost of electricity still a major social issue, it would be tempting for any political party to want to manipulate electricity rates to win votes.  Such political manipulation could result in the company becoming unsustainable, which according to Fortis, is already the case.

     Perhaps the Barrow Administration should consider the social business model proposed by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.  Yunus, dubbed “the banker to the poor”, believes social business is the future of capitalism.  As he describes in his book Building Social Businesses: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs, “The social business…must be self-sustaining—that is, it generates enough income to cover its own costs.  Part of the economic surplus the social business creates is invested in expanding the business, and a part is kept in reserve to cover uncertainties.  Thus, the social business might be described as a ‘non-loss, non-dividend company’ dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal” (p. xvii).   This model seems tailored for what the GOB says it wants to accomplish, and what it has been attempting to do via the PUC over the past three years.    

     The PUC has kept electricity rates in Belize incredibly stable over the past three years, despite escalations in oil prices.  Based on crude calculations ([amount due – GCT]/usage) from my own residential light bill in January 2008, the cost per kilowatt hour was approximately US$0.202.  A friend’s light bill in March 2011 revealed a cost per kilowatt hour of US$0.207.  Meanwhile, on my most recent light bill for August 2011 in Jamaica, the cost per kilowatt hour is some US$0.372, almost double what it is in Belize!

How Jamaica chooses to handle the power problem now will shape the future of this country.  Already the OUR has stepped in with an investigation into JPS’s billing practices; meanwhile, the GOJ has been exploring alternative energy sources.  But will these measures do anything to make electricity more affordable in the short to medium term?  As the Golding administration attempts to rescue the Jamaican economy, it must recognize that the global economic crisis and the global energy crisis are one and the same.  The next few years will be critical to Jamaica’s economic and, importantly, human development.

Bob Marley and the Birth of Black Consciousness

          I’ve always believed that watching the movie Malcolm X sometime during high school, and my subsequent seeking out and reading of his autobiography, was the beginning of my consciousness as a Black person.  Indeed, it was a time of great self awareness and awakening.  Before, I had not thought much about my racial identity outside of what we were taught about the ethnic groups in primary school in Belize.  I knew I was half Creole—my mother being of the light-skinned straight-haired variety from the village of Burrell Boom; and half Garifuna—my father being a very dark skinned man originally from Dangriga, who understood the Garifuna language but rarely spoke it. 

     My father is so dark, his passport picture looks like an ink blot on the page.  We laughed about it, although really, it wasn’t funny that the equipment at the Immigration Office wasn’t capable of capturing the likeness of a dark-skinned person.  He also once told me that years ago, when he was dating my mother, some people would remark, “konkas (a very large type of housefly) inna milk”.  It wasn’t said with any malicious intent, but I suppose it’s the kind of self-deprecating humor that Black people have come to adapt.

     My mother, a teacher, was very proud of her culture, and went to pains to also teach us about my father’s culture.  As children, my brother and I attended Garifuna language classes.  To this day, I can sing the Belizean national anthem, count from one to ten, and introduce myself in Garifuna.  My neighbor, Ms. Emily, also happened to be a proud Garifuna woman who hosted dance classes, and so we received much of our indoctrination into our father’s culture via her.  As for the Creole culture, we absorbed that through language and tradition—my grandfather’s stories told under the house on the large septic tank on Freetown Road in Belize City; my grandmother’s cooking.  As light-skinned as my mother’s side of the family is, none of them would ever claim to be white, although it is said that my grandfather’s ancestor was a Scottish man.  If you’d ask them, they’d all say they’re Creole, which in Belize can mean any variety of colour, and which literally means mixed.

     I never really thought about these things until high school.  And sure, it was Denzel’s realistic depiction of Malcolm that triggered something in my consciousness, but without a doubt, it was my father’s music that planted the early seeds.  Sundays were his time to “beat out”, as we say in Belize; that’s when he would play his music loud enough that it reverberated throughout the house.  Bob Marley was one of his favorites, and also Burning Spear.  I remember when he first brought home a Muta Baruka CD and started playing it.  My brother and I didn’t get it.  We laughed at the strange mix of chanting and music and skits and what perhaps was poetry, we weren’t quite sure.

One day, I remember picking up the booklet that came with one of the Bob Marley CDs and reading the lyrics of his songs. 

Until the philosophy

That holds one race superior

And another inferior

Is finally and permanently

Discredited and abandoned.

Everywhere is war!

Until the colour of a man’s skin

Is of no more significance

Than the colour of his eyes

Me say war!

Until the basic human rights

Are equally guaranteed to all

Without regards for race

War!

Until that day

The dream of lasting peace

World citizenship

And the rule of international morality

Will remain but a fleeting illusion

To be pursued but never attained

Well everywhere is war!

     At the time, I wasn’t aware Bob was singing the words of Haile Selassie.  I didn’t even know who Selassie was, nor Marcus Garvey, from whom he also borrowed liberally, but I remember I started paying more keen attention to Bob’s lyrics and regarding my father’s music as not just his Sunday noise and old people boring music, the way my own daughter now regards my old Tupac tapes.  Like me, in a few years she’ll begin to get it.  She’ll also begin to understand what Bob Marley was singing about.  Unlike me, she’s already aware of Marcus Garvey, since he’s a national hero of Jamaica and they learn about him in school. 

     What Bob Marley did for so many people around the world was awaken a self consciousness quite like the moment when Adam and Eve first realized they were naked in the Garden of Eden.  Their nudity was something that had never bothered them before; likewise, the ignorance of the state of the Black person was a simple fact of life for many.  In some places—South Africa, the southern United States—where the dichotomy between Black and White was a lot more obvious, and obviously unjust, many had already come into this consciousness; but in places like my little Belize, where racism was a lot more latent, Bob was the one who began to change our paradigms.  For me, it was like a child learning to read.  Have you ever been around a child learning to read?  It’s like a whole new world begins to open up before their eyes.  They begin reading signs on buildings and streets, everything they can get their hands on.  They ask a lot of questions about words they can’t pronounce and what they mean.  They are suddenly experiencing the world in a different way; things make sense that never made sense before. 

     That’s the power of Bob.  The reason his music continues to sell as much as it does, is that every day, a new generation of young people discover him, relate to him.  Thirty-one years after his death, and on this, what would have been his sixty-seventh birthday, Bob Marley remains culturally relevant to millions of people around the world who, through his music, are just becoming conscious of their Blackness and how that affects their social relations, their perceptions and their identity.

     It’s incredible how much Black consciousness, philosophy, ideology has come out of the small island of Jamaica, where I now reside with my family.  Bob, Marcus, Louise Bennett (whose Back to Africa I discovered in Standard 6).  Yet, so many years later, I find Jamaicans still afflicted by an identity crisis.  This is a majority Black country that refuses to identify itself as such, and instead chooses to live under the illusion, the national motto, “out of many one”.  And while I’m not trying to deny the existence of other cultures in Jamaica, the simple fact is that they are a very small minority in a country where, in my opinion, society has created an artificial division between Black and “brown”, associating them in the antithetical geographical constructs of “uptown” and “downtown” Kingston, the haves versus the have nots.  Three and a half years living in Jamaica and I’m still not comfortable with being called “brownin”.  Bob Marley was the son of a White man and a Black woman; he grew up in “country” and moved as a child to a tenement yard in Trenchtown, and so despite his “brown” colour, would have been shaped by the social experience of living “downtown” and growing up poor.  So perhaps it is through that existence and what he came to represent following his convergence to Rastafarianism that no one would dare call Bob Marley “brown”, nor would they deny that he was a Black man; I’m sure he’d have it no other way.

     And that's MY perspective.