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An excerpt below, but I found this article very timely and interesting...
From the Jamaica Observer
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...If an overly ambitious businessman wanted to move up fast and steal a little of the socioeconomic space controlled by the twenty-one families, he would donate to the politician who would drink liquor with the gunman who knew the crooked cops who protected the druggist. In time, in almost Orwellian fashion, it became difficult to differentiate between politician, gunman, crooked cop, druggist and businessman.
Power desires that all ends of the power spectrum operate in a closed/looped setting.
It is politically correct to assume that even though elements of those alliances still exist in our polity, there have been radical shifts in the spectrum. The politician is no longer the all-conquering earthly god. Whereas in the earlier years he was able to supply funds to gunmen who were prepared to shed the blood of those who supported the other side, during the period of the 1980s the lines between gunman and druggist became blurred. A merger had taken place.
As the crooked cops, and the gunman/druggist grew tighter in their union, some of the businessmen who had dabbled heavily in the ganja trade of the 1970s outgrew the crude alliances. In the social whoosh which sounded, the politician found himself as the 'bwoy' in the picture.
Today, we laud the businessmen who made it through ganja runnings in the 1970s but hurl barbs at those who stick closer to the streets and the poorer among us.
But history tells us that those political strongmen who spent too much time fingering their umbilical attachments to politicians and seeking to be constantly fed from their dried-up teats met deaths which had striking similarities. It was almost as if the state was trying to redress the balance in the sick power spectrum.
The abandonment of the poor
Most of the rural poor who came to the capital city in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s ended up in ghettoes in the city and on the perimeter surrounding it. Their first dreams were a visa and a ticket to the land of opportunity.
When that failed to materialise, they crowded the city, as well as the outskirts, and that presented the politician with a logistical nightmare that he somehow turned into his opportunity. The magic word was HOUSING. Housing slums were razed and in their place housing garrisons were built.
As state resources were diverted to provide housing for these poor, often under-educated people, one would have had to be a monster to disagree with politicians as they rolled out these high-rises. It was, in the immediate instance, a win-win situation for the politician. One, he secured his political base for life. Two, he was shown to have love for the poor.
Third, where public commentators and social scientists had no answer to the immediate problems of the poor - lack of housing - all bought into the idea that before a poverty-stricken man could educate himself and go out looking for work, he needed to live somewhere.
What no one had a solution for was the irresponsible behaviour which would arise. After paying a few months' peppercorn mortgages most residents ceased all payment. At the same time, the politician turned a blind eye when the residents ceased paying for water supplies and, through community enforcers, JPS found itself on the dark outside, looking in at the free light burning at the expense of the law-abiding citizens.
As the state largesse dried up - after all, the politician could always say, "I gave you housing. What more do you want?" - many of these garrison residents found that the free housing still did not allow them to eat.
Into that social space walked the community enforcer, the community leader. These zones of exclusion where the vote was determined long before election day saw a sort of hands-off relationship between the political representative and the community leader.
He became the community government. In communities right...</div></div>
From the Jamaica Observer
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...If an overly ambitious businessman wanted to move up fast and steal a little of the socioeconomic space controlled by the twenty-one families, he would donate to the politician who would drink liquor with the gunman who knew the crooked cops who protected the druggist. In time, in almost Orwellian fashion, it became difficult to differentiate between politician, gunman, crooked cop, druggist and businessman.
Power desires that all ends of the power spectrum operate in a closed/looped setting.
It is politically correct to assume that even though elements of those alliances still exist in our polity, there have been radical shifts in the spectrum. The politician is no longer the all-conquering earthly god. Whereas in the earlier years he was able to supply funds to gunmen who were prepared to shed the blood of those who supported the other side, during the period of the 1980s the lines between gunman and druggist became blurred. A merger had taken place.
As the crooked cops, and the gunman/druggist grew tighter in their union, some of the businessmen who had dabbled heavily in the ganja trade of the 1970s outgrew the crude alliances. In the social whoosh which sounded, the politician found himself as the 'bwoy' in the picture.
Today, we laud the businessmen who made it through ganja runnings in the 1970s but hurl barbs at those who stick closer to the streets and the poorer among us.
But history tells us that those political strongmen who spent too much time fingering their umbilical attachments to politicians and seeking to be constantly fed from their dried-up teats met deaths which had striking similarities. It was almost as if the state was trying to redress the balance in the sick power spectrum.
The abandonment of the poor
Most of the rural poor who came to the capital city in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s ended up in ghettoes in the city and on the perimeter surrounding it. Their first dreams were a visa and a ticket to the land of opportunity.
When that failed to materialise, they crowded the city, as well as the outskirts, and that presented the politician with a logistical nightmare that he somehow turned into his opportunity. The magic word was HOUSING. Housing slums were razed and in their place housing garrisons were built.
As state resources were diverted to provide housing for these poor, often under-educated people, one would have had to be a monster to disagree with politicians as they rolled out these high-rises. It was, in the immediate instance, a win-win situation for the politician. One, he secured his political base for life. Two, he was shown to have love for the poor.
Third, where public commentators and social scientists had no answer to the immediate problems of the poor - lack of housing - all bought into the idea that before a poverty-stricken man could educate himself and go out looking for work, he needed to live somewhere.
What no one had a solution for was the irresponsible behaviour which would arise. After paying a few months' peppercorn mortgages most residents ceased all payment. At the same time, the politician turned a blind eye when the residents ceased paying for water supplies and, through community enforcers, JPS found itself on the dark outside, looking in at the free light burning at the expense of the law-abiding citizens.
As the state largesse dried up - after all, the politician could always say, "I gave you housing. What more do you want?" - many of these garrison residents found that the free housing still did not allow them to eat.
Into that social space walked the community enforcer, the community leader. These zones of exclusion where the vote was determined long before election day saw a sort of hands-off relationship between the political representative and the community leader.
He became the community government. In communities right...</div></div>
to a hyah level of cool runnings pon beaches
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