I don't usually agree with Don Robotham's ideas on social matters (such as human rights and national security) but I think his article on the International Monetary Fund - IMF (Sunday, June 28) was important in terms of bringing a sense of reality to the debate about the agency, especially at a time when some of our commentators have been getting carried away with wishful thinking about it.

The police, for example, may employ softer 'community policing' strategies but the main function of the security forces remains to protect the dominant social order and so does the IMF in terms of ensuring reproduction of the hierarchical structure of the international capitalist system.

If looked at in this way, claims about a new and different, or kinder and gentler IMF being there to facilitate restructuring of dependent peripheral economies are simply absurd.

Convergence of thinking

The 'three-card trick' now being played out is that there comes a time as now when declining foreign-exchange inflows, etc, produce a convergence of thinking between the IMF, the Government and other 'key' players about what to do, and the question of who imposes the agreed 'condition-alities', is a matter of political calculation. It might be better for the IMF if it is perceived as a Jamaican-imposed conditionality plan, or better for the Government and 'key' players if it is perceived as an IMF plan. It is all politics.

In so far as Robotham believes that the Government can entice or seduce civil society organisations into participating in a mutual negotiation over IMF condition-alities allow me to list five main demands.

Increase taxes on profits and dividends;

Increase taxes on incomes over $3 million;

A public hearing on the budget to ferret out and redeploy for the benefit of the poor that portion which goes to prop up the ostentatious lifestyle of the upper echelon bureaucrats and politicians;

Increased taxes on luxury items (gas-guzzling SUVs being one of them); and

A forensic audit of the public debt to determine that portion which was used wastefully, corruptly, and for non-development purposes for which poor working-class Jamaicans cannot accept responsibility for repayment.

I am, etc.,

LLOYD D'AGUILAR

lgdaguilar@yahoo.com

Kingston 6