Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

"Men must be at the cen­tre of the econ­o­my, and the econ­o­my can­not be mea­sured on­ly by max­imi­sa­tion of prof­it but rather ac­cord­ing to the com­mon good. The econ­o­my doesn't func­tion with mar­ket self-reg­u­la­tion but needs an eth­i­cal rea­son for mankind." -Pope Bene­dict xvi -com­ments made as he trav­elled to Madrid for Catholic Church's World Youth Day cel­e­bra­tion

There is an eco­nom­ic sword of Damo­cles hang­ing per­ilous­ly close to Eu­rope, Amer­i­ca, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the Caribbean etc. In oth­er words, the threat is not just to de­vel­op­ing na­tions but al­so to the de­vel­oped world. By now, we should know that Barack Oba­ma is fac­ing his sternest test as he grap­ples with an econ­o­my that ap­pears to be go­ing in the di­rec­tion of a dou­ble dip re­ces­sion. Whether par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, trade union lead­ers, busi­ness gu­rus wish to face the re­al­i­ty and make strate­gic moves or not, the cold hard facts are there for those who love to look at the big pic­ture. The Pope's call should not be triv­i­alised or con­demned. Un­just men can­not pro­duce a just so­ci­ety and my­opic lead­ers will not have the skill or the con­sis­ten­cy to en­gage in a di­a­logue that would im­pact pos­i­tive­ly up­on the com­mu- ni­ty. Pope Bene­dict de­clared that a moral di­men­sion wasn't "ex­te­ri­or but in­te­ri­or and fun­da­men­tal." That was an­oth­er way of say­ing that the heart of the hu­man prob­lem is the prob­lem of the hu­man heart. Hel­lo there, that tyres still have to be burnt and road block­ades es­tab­lished to stim­u­late slow politi­cians proves that we are still miles away from achiev­ing de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus.

The bac­cha­nal that erupt­ed last Thurs­day at the PSA head­quar­ters be­tween King Duke and Prince Saun­ders and their sup­port­ers is not a trib­ute to democ­ra­cy or ma­tu­ri­ty. This was de­spi­ca­ble be­hav­ior to the max and il­lus­trates that we are not liv­ing in a free state, but we are liv­ing in a frag­ile, im­ma­ture state.

What­ev­er may be the lim­i­ta­tions or sins on both sides of the lead­er­ship strug­gle, the fun­da­men­tal is­sue is the sud­den ac­cep­tance by King Duke of the five per cent cap. King Duke has been called trai­tor, Ju­das, sell­out artist, dic­ta­tor etc. He has been called all kinds of names. But in spite of all the ac­cu­sa­tions, he has signed agree­ments with the Gov­ern­ment and state agen­cies such as WASA and Ni­herst. We have the ug­ly sce­nario of sus­pen­sion and counter-sus­pen­sions and it ap­pears that a lot of mon­ey will be spent on pro­longed court bat­tles. Ap­par­ent­ly, con­flict man­age­ment mech­a­nisms in this or­gan­i­sa­tion have ei­ther failed or are not be­ing prop­er­ly utilised.

I read a Ria Taitt ar­ti­cle on Sun­day where Dr Kei­th Row­ley called "for talks be­tween gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to deal with the prob­lem of gun vi­o­lence." Dr Row­ley, like thou­sands of re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens, is con­cerned about the "ter­ri­fy­ing es­ca­la­tion in the lo­cal vi­o­lent crime sit­u­a­tion." He al­so made the salient point that "in­no­cent peo­ple stand­ing in a pub­lic place can be gunned down by gun-tot­ing un­knowns."

Of course, what grabbed na­tion­al at­ten­tion was the Jon­estown mas­sacre last Thurs­day, which left four peo­ple dead and three oth­ers wound­ed. With­in 24 hours, sev­en peo­ple were slaugh­tered in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in­clud­ing Denise Phillips, 28, who was as­sas­si­nat­ed in Point Lisas. The bru­tal dec­i­ma­tion of Arnold Mungroo must trig­ger mem­o­ries of the Wild, Wild West. This guy was vi­cious­ly elim­i­nat­ed: chopped, shot and, ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, burnt al­most be­yond recog­ni­tion. Al­ready there are calls for the im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roo-dal Mooni­lal has been quick to point out that "cit­i­zens ought not to feel in­se­cure fol­low­ing the re­cent up­surge in killings." It is im­por­tant that gov­ern­ment min­is- ters pro­vide as­sur­ance and give hope to the cit­i­zens of the na­tion.

But the mem­bers of Cab­i­net, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors must be aware that cit­i­zens were ex­treme­ly tense when the po­lice of­fi­cers promised to stay home last Mon­day to "rest and re­flect"-the new 2 Rs. This is new maths where 2 Rs = in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. Giv­en the fact that the mur­der rate has in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the past three weeks, the plan by the po­lice to with­draw their labour was reck­less and in­sen­si­tive. Lis­ten, the pop­u­la­tion did not know what to ex­pect, and when Mon­day evening ar­rived cit­i­zens were just wait­ing to ex­hale. We must go be­yond the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion meet­ing to dis­cuss gun vi­o­lence, as im­por­tant as that meet­ing may be in the short-term. We must now es­tab­lish as quick­ly as pos­si­ble a na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment task force which should con­sist of Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion, labour, busi­ness, NGOs, youth etc. This must be im­ple­ment­ed with a sense of ur­gency. Every stake­hold­er should ei­ther be rep­re­sent­ed or make con­tri­bu­tions that would guide the lead­er­ship of this na­tion in craft­ing ef­fec­tive poli­cies to pro­duce jus­tice and har­mo­ny.

Pri­or­i­ty must be giv­en to the rag­ing in­dus­tri­al cri­sis fea­tur­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the trade unions. This will not dis­ap­pear and re­quires flex­i­bil­i­ty, thor­ough re­search and a will to take bold and de­ci­sive ac­tion. The call for di­a­logue and the need for an in­sti­tu­tion such as a na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment task force must be based on gen­uine ef­forts to cre­ate eq­ui­ty in the so­ci­ety. Re­lat­ed is­sues that should be dis­cussed and ad­dressed strate­gi­cal­ly would in­clude con­flict res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms, crime and vi­o­lence with spe­cial em­pha­sis on the gun and drug trades, dis­ci­pline in schools, the ex­pan­sion of pro­grammes such as the My­lat ini­tia­tive, em­pow­er­ment of youth- fo­cused NGOs such as boy scouts, girl guides, cadets, pathfind­ers etc. While we en­gage in de­bate on whether the trade unions or the Gov­ern­ment have the flex­i­bil­i­ty and the ma­tu­ri­ty to place coun­try be­fore po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunism, there are cit­i­zens who are de­mand­ing an­swers to mind-bog­gling ques­tions. Let us ex­am­ine some of their is­sues: How is it pos­si­ble for drug deal­ers to be op­er­at­ing for more than a decade with­out be­ing ar­rest­ed? Is it pos­si­ble for gun­men to have nur­tured re­la­tion­ships with po­lice of­fi­cers? Do we have drug-push­ing dens sit­u­at­ed close to po­lice sta­tions? Do we have a group or­gan­is­ing protests on a week­ly ba­sis with the in­ten­tion to pro­duce in­sta­bil­i­ty? What is the true state of our econ­o­my? Should the Min­istry of Fi­nance en­gage in a na­tion­al ed­u­ca- tion ex­er­cise that can reach all the groups in our re­pub­lic?

In con­clu­sion, I wish to give at­ten­tion to a state­ment made by Eco­nom­ics Pro­fes­sor Nouriel Roubi­ni. He said: "Re­cent pop­u­lar demon­stra­tions, from the Mid­dle East to Is­rael to the UK, and ris­ing pop­u­lar anger in Chi­na-and soon enough in oth­er ad­vanced econo-mies and emerg­ing mar­kets-are all dri­ven by the same is­sues and ten­sions: grow­ing in­equal­i­ty, pover­ty, un­em­ploy­ment and hope­less­ness."