military weapons

We ignored him and built up military weapons instead. Now, Raul Castro has pointed out at the latest Non-Aligned Movement's meeting in Cuba last week that the world's military spending is US$1 trillion. Yet, US$800 billion over 10 years could end poverty and hunger and the lack of health, education and housing around the world. But, even with the multitrillion-dollar cost of the world financial and economic crisis, no one is saying that countries should cut back on war spending. And, we are bailing out the rich even as the United Nations reports that the number of hungry people around the world rose by over 109 million to 963 million in 2008 alone.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made its way into global affairs 30 years ago. Now, its managing director gleefully says, "The IMF is back." Its early foray came on the heels of the first oil-price shock of 1973-74, which helped to focus the call for the NIEO. Countries like Jamaica dealt with that crisis naively. We chose to subsidise the cost of the oil-price increases and that ate up our accounts. We thought we could export and earn our way out. But sugar and alumina markets went soft and tourism was nowhere where it is now.

The country's production drive, such as the 'eat what we grow and grow what we eat' campaign, land lease, and our Emergency Production Plan were resisted as 'communist' and the Americans decided to 'make the economy scream' because we joined Cuba in supporting the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

Unfortunately, there is no mobilisation for production for this crisis. We have just been through three global meetings but none offered any immediate mobilisation plans. The G-20 meeting did announce plans to mobilise funds, but ours would come through the IMF and the IMF is not known to mobilise production. We must do it. The Summit of the Americas was more about Obama and Cuba than economic recovery in the Americas. The Non-Aligned Summit in Cuba was a call for unity among its members and for spending on the poor but there is no consensus on how to do this. There is a United Nations High-Level Conference on the impact of the financial and economic crisis on development set for June 1-3. We might find answers there.

MAY DAY REACTIONS

Last year, the United Nations warned that as poverty increased, there could be more rioting and social instability in the poorer countries. But May Day (Labour) celebrations last week were used by workers, the unemployed and migrant workers in the rich countries to show anger and in many cases to riot over the way governments have been handling the financial crisis. In some cases, the middle class came out in sympathy too. There were riots and or angry rallies and marches of protests in Turkey, Germany, France, the United States, Japan, Greece, Spain, Hong Kong, Russia and others. They were angry at bailouts, rising unemployment, and even the very system of capitalism itself. Looting, burning, marches and riot squads with tear gas were evidence that there is much unhappiness around, visibly expressed, and much more below the surface.

Bruce Golding prefaced Audley Shaw's controversial budget presentation with an address to the nation warning of possible police action against demonstrators. He is going to have to do a lot more. The Government's late reaction to the crisis has caused a run on foreign exchange and rising interest rates to shore up the foreign exchange. That interest rate has spiked the debt and because of that debt, an onerous tax package has been offloaded on us. This is precisely one of the points being made by protesters in Europe. Why are hard-working citizens being asked to carry the burden of increased taxation, wage freezes and layoffs to bail out unscrupulous businesspersons and irresponsible and gullible consumers and clients?

The Government is already late with a plan for emergency production as well. We had such a plan, an emergency production plan in 1977, aimed at self-reliance and agricultural development. The plan got nowhere because it was incompatible with the IMF's plan. That emergency production plan was a possible alternative to the IMF option. We don't know enough about the IMF this time around but the Government seems to be preparing us for it. Yet, with or without an IMF, we need to get our production up to new levels and to bring idle or underutilised resources into production.

economic growth

The Government has announced that economic growth will be negative by more than three per cent in the coming year. We therefore need an emergency plan for tourism, for the bauxite industry, the sugar industry, the banana industry and for all those communities suffering from the virtual collapse of these industries. We need an emergency plan for remittances, for foreign investments, for manufacturing, for energy, and an emergency plan to protect our social gains in health and education, for the children and the elderly. This plan cannot simply be announced from Parliament either. It must engage the people in all their sectors and communities in a national dialogue.

If there is any good news in all of this it is that, as a country, we are better prepared to respond than we were in the 1970s or 1980s. We have better airports and more hotel rooms to put visitors. We have stronger financial system regulations to give confidence and banking experience with which to mobilise savings. We have stronger connections with our diaspora and greater flows of remittances.

We have a PetroCaribe oil-price agreement to cushion us from high oil prices and from which to save for social and economic investments. We have had the good sense to put away funds in our Tourism Enhancement Fund. We have established executive agencies that are more financially independent because of user fees. We have a highway system and better water and electricity supply systems for agriculture and rural development than 30-odd years ago. We have a political Opposition that has not reacted with the recklessness of those years and our people have not reacted to the hard times the way they were reacting in Europe last week.

There is still time to mobilise the nation for conservation and production. We import too much and waste too much. At Cuba's May Day celebrations last week, the call was for productivity, efficiency, discipline, sacrifice, more exports and fewer imports. There was nothing akin to that in Golding's budget presentation last Tuesday. We have a crisis without an emergency response - very strange.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.