O. Hilaire Sobers, ContributorEdward Seaga, in his Sunday Gleaner column of January 20, wrote an accurate history of the modus operandi of the security forces in Tivoli Gardens. After several years of human rights activism in Jamaica, I can certainly agree with his conclusions regarding the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and state terrorism.
However, after reading his column, two questions came to mind. The first, and most significant, question for me is: What has Seaga's contribution been to the state of affairs he so tragically describes for communities like Tivoli Gardens?
I don't ask this to be mischievous or to be partisan. I ask this from the perspective of a Jamaican in his mid-40s who believes that Jamaica is still paying the price for the garrison politics that both the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) have practised since independence, if not before.
I ask this from the perspective of a Jamaican who is currently in 'self-imposed exile' because his country has become intolerably corrupt and degenerate, largely as a result of the type of politics embraced by both the JLP and the PNP.
Maintaining garrisons
With all due respect to Seaga, what is happening in Tivoli today is, in my view, part of his own legacy. For while Seaga speaks of JCF "killer police who are irretrievably steeped in the deadly practice of state terrorism", surely this is the outcome of garrison politics, where police were systematically co-opted to protect the interests of either major party. This legacy is not Seaga's alone. Certainly former prime ministers Manley, Patterson, and Simpson Miller have all contributed significantly as well.
From a regional standpoint, Jamaica is an aberration. In no other Caricom territory do we find the calculated creation of garrison politics, political violence and organised thuggery. Nowhere else in the Caribbean is one likely to be discussing whether a constituency is the 'mother of all garrisons' or not. In my travels to different parts of the world, I have often had great difficulty explaining this garrison concept to non-Jamaicans. However, in Jamaica, we treat garrisonism as normal, with very few Jamaicans seeming to understand the corrosive effect that tribal politics has had on the rule of law.
For me, the political leadership of Seaga's generation has dearly cost my generation, and is likely to cost many generations to come. The tribal politics that his generation elevated to a science continues to haunt governance in Jamaica today, despite promises by his successors to eschew that brand of politics.
Undoubtedly, the people of Jamaica have been complicit in the corruption of our institutions. How else can one account for the fact that the most loved politician in Jamaica, certainly up to recently, is one of the chief exponents of garrison politics?
Moreover, unlike Seaga, Portia Simpson Miller has maintained her constituency in unpardonable squalor - yet she is loved.
That she is loved is a serious indictment on the Jamaican people, one which gives the lie to our claim to be tired of the tribalism and all that it entails.
This brings me to my second question, one that speaks directly to the gerontocracy of Jamaican governance. This is one of the side effects of the tribal politics we practise, where leaders seem to believe that they have divine right to rule indefinitely and to do so without regard for the welfare of the people they supposedly serve.
And because party loyalty trumps competence in a tribal political system, the same generation that squandered Jamaica's independence is still clinging to positions of leadership throughout the Jamaican society.
By contrast, in Barbados, Owen Arthur, a man of 58, has just ceded the reins of power to Mia Mottley, who is 43.
My contemporary at the law faculty, David Thompson, is now prime minister of Barbados at 46. In a previous Democratic Labour Party government, he was finance minister by the age of 29.
This simply would not happen in Jamaica. In the last PNP Cabinet, the youngest cabinet minister was Phillip Paulwell, who was born in the year of Jamaica's Independence. Most of the Cabinet members were well over 50. The current Cabinet seems to be even more rooted in gerontocracy, given the recycling of septuagenarians like Pearnel Charles, Mike Henry, Dorothy Lightbourne, et al.
I am no ageist, but, frankly, I don't see what these persons bring to governance in terms of new ideas and energies. In fairness, there are a few younger Cabinet ministers like Chris Tufton, Andrew Holness, James Robertson, but they are exceptions rather than the norm.
Stifled by gerontocracy
People of my generation, who consider that they have something to offer to Jamaica, are stifled by this gerontocracy.
P.J. Patterson was a great believer in a political apprenticeship system, which was just another way of preserving the old guard and repressing new, youthful energies. What many politicians in Jamaica don't seem to grasp is that this system of governance does nothing to stem Jamaica's brain drain, but indeed exacerbates it.
I am not by any means suggesting that Seaga has not contributed to nation building. Certainly, the nation needed him desperately in 1980 to restore some equilibrium to a country that was completely out of control.
However, his and his generation's style of governance has alienated many. It is a legacy of divisiveness. Further, an unfortunate side effect of gerontocratic rule is the entrenchment of the 'Peter Principle'.
I am angry with this generation for messing up Jamaica and leaving my generation - and those succeeding - with the task of cleaning up. So for me, while I appreciate Seaga's lesson on the recent history of Tivoli Gardens, what I would appreciate even more is an honest expression of responsibility for his role in creating this history in the first place.
O. Hilaire Sobers is a US-based Jamaican attorney-at-law. He may be reached at ohilaire@yahoo.com.
