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We have watched every incident get processed through the machinery of partisan loyalty until the question of conduct disappears and only the question of who won that particular exchange remains.
And through all of it, the Jamaican people have been watching. Watching and concluding. Not about individuals. About the institution. About whether it deserves their faith. I am telling you, as plainly and as respectfully as I know how, that faith is eroding. It is eroding in the conversations young people are having. It is eroding in the number of Jamaicans who describe politics not as a calling but as a dirty game they want no part of. It is eroding in the quiet decisions being made by some of the most capable young men and women in this country to put their gifts somewhere, anywhere, that is not this.
You are losing the best of us. Not because they are weak. Because they are paying attention.
The Price of What We Model
There is a child in Westmoreland right now who is the brightest person in every room she enters. She has already read more than most adults around her. She cares about this country with a passion that would put many career politicians to shame. She is watching what public life looks like in Jamaica. Every time she sees a woman reduced to her body at a political meeting, she moves one step further from the door. Every time she sees a debate drowned out by crosstalk designed not to challenge but to silence, she wonders whether the most principled thing she can do with her gifts is keep them away from this room. Every time the person who should be modelling something better delivers instead another snarl, another cheap shot, another moment designed for the crowd rather than for the country, she makes her calculation and adjusts accordingly.
And the people who stay, who are comfortable in the culture of combat as default, they accumulate. They become the norm. They set the tone. They train the next generation in their own image. And the generation after that. And so the pattern, rather than being interrupted, compounds itself.
This is how institutions die. Not all at once. Slowly. Comfortably. By degrees that feel manageable until the morning you look up and cannot remember what the standard was supposed to be.
What Are We Gaining if We Are Losing This?
Jamaica has reasons for genuine pride. Do not misread this letter as the writing of someone who cannot see the good. I see the good. I see the economic resilience of a country that has survived debt burdens that would have broken nations with far more resources. I see our athletes, Usain Bolt's name written permanently into the story of what the human body can do, and the generations that came before and after him carrying our colours to every corner of the earth. I see our music, the culture of this small island echoing from Tokyo to Lagos to London to São Paulo, people who have never set foot on Jamaican soil singing our songs and feeling something they cannot explain. That is real. That is ours. That is extraordinary.
But a nation is not only its economy. It is not only its athletes or its music or its GDP. A nation is its character. And character is not built in the boardroom or the stadium. It is built in the daily choices made by the people entrusted with the responsibility of public leadership. It is built in what leaders allow and what they challenge. In what they laugh at and what they refuse to find funny. In whether the women who step into public life can do so with the confidence that their ideas are what will be measured, or whether they must always carry the additional burden of knowing that their womanhood is a vulnerability that anyone, at any time, can exploit for a crowd's approval.
With all due respect Janie, this is deeply flawed, decided to take a more pointed read after Minister’s comment.
Jamaica does NOT operate under a parliamentary supremacy, we did NOT inherit that.
When I was living in a the tenement yard in Central Kgn, religiously police would knock on the door using the guns or their fists wee hours of the morning. Opened the door & I’m staring down the barrel of their rifles plus they’re shouting at me asking which man lived with me 1/?
I am especially saddened to learn of the passing of Imru N. Khouri. A vibrant young Jamaican who devoted himself wholeheartedly to his community and to the people around him. His passion for service, his leadership, and the relationships he built left a lasting impression on many.
My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and colleagues as they grieve this tremendous loss. In moments like these, we are reminded how precious life is and how important it is to cherish those we love while we can.
May Imru rest in peace, and may his memory continue to inspire all who knew him.
THE NEURODIVERGENT URGE TO OVER EXPLAIN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IN HOPES TO AVOID MISUNDERSTANDINGS, BUT THEN GETS ANXIOUS THAT MY OVEREXPLAINING WAS ANNOYING AND CAUSE MORE CONFUSION.
I find myself avoiding public events and spaces more and more. An increasing sense of confrontation and noise is palpable. Social interaction seems increasingly coarse and self centered. Maybe it’s just age.