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with Leighton Levy
Every now and then I have to ask myself why things happen the way they do in this country. It boggles my mind the way we perceive things and accept things that elsewhere would cause people to raise cain.
Just this week, I attended a press conference where Vybz Kartel's Teacha's Pet was being launched. The creator and producers were there, the title sponsor LIME was there, and the media was there and yet the press conference that was to start at 11 a.m. eventually, almost inadvertently, began 45 minutes later.
I mean, why did we need to wait almost an hour for someone who has a track record of being late and, like he did this week, doesn't even show up at all? He is the star of the reality series, yes, but everyone else was there, so why didn't the press conference start on time?
I am just glad that the media, some members of which are much too big fans of the entertainer, actually reported that Kartel didn't show up for the launch of his own television series. I could be wrong but elsewhere in the world things may have well have ended up differently. I hope that afterwards the producers and sponsors, who have invested much time and effort in making this series a possibility, were sufficiently angry when they spoke to Kartel about his absence.
This is a man, by the way, who failed to show up for an event he was invited to in Guyana. His music has subsequently been banned from radio stations in that country after authorities there deemed his music to be too negative.
I hope people here take note.
The other thing I always wonder about is something that I have mentioned several times before in this very space. Last week Sunday, what seemed like a million people turned up at the National Arena for the annual People's National Party (PNP) conference. I suppose frustrated by the state of the economy, and the fact that more people have been losing their jobs as businesses struggle to stay afloat, helped pull people out of their homes eager to hear what alternatives to this government are out there.
What they heard was another load of hot air from the party leader, Portia Simpson Miller. Why hot air? Okay, do you realise how uncanny it is that whenever a party is in opposition they have all the solutions to the country's problems, but as soon as they become the government they tell you all the reasons why their solutions can't work?
Take this JEEP programme that Mrs Simpson Miller mentioned on Sunday. Under this programme, jobs will be created in the short term, the medium term and the long term, with wealth being created like never before. On Monday, a lot of people were singing its praises, but here is my question: where is the money going to come from to pay for this programme? I don't even think the PNP knows. You realise how quiet they have gone since Sunday? As I said before, the speech was nothing but hot air. I dare them to prove me wrong.
Who remembers when the JLP was in opposition? In 2007 when they won the elections, their manifesto also spoke to job-creation programmes. Four years later, where are those jobs? The parties do it all the time, but they seem to always find a way to continue to fool most of the voting public.
The PNP are also trying to tell Jamaica that they can do a better job in government. They can do this and they can do that and the JLP can't do that, but they seem to forget that a lot of what is happening in Jamaica has a lot to do with a lot of what is happening in the world. And right now the global economy stinks. But you know what, the masses, blinded by political allegiances, somehow fail to accept these things. Why? I just don't know.
