Haughton-Cardenas: "This business of power is a very dangerous thing to the human psyche, and you have to be conscious of that to avoid obvious pitfalls that come with this idea of having so much power over other people's lives." - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer

President of the United People's Party (UPP), Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas was a guest at The Gleaner's Editors Forum last week, where she spoke about her party's plan for education, its view on political finance reforms and her own disillusionment with politics since entering the fray one year ago.

BRIBING THE ELECTORATE, A HUMAN THING

I have the same view about human beings as I always have. Most of us are more inclined to do the wrong thing because it's easier. I am afraid politics is just a human thing and the nearer you get to power, the more likely you are to fall prey. For me, my understanding of God is going to keep me straight.

This business of power is a very dangerous thing to the human psyche, and you have to be conscious of that to avoid obvious pitfalls that come with this idea of having so much power over other people's lives. It hasn't changed my view that most human beings will do almost anything. It might even have made me more cynical ­ no, more disillusioned.

I really didn't know that people bought votes the way they are buying them out there on the streets now. I didn't know people give people envelopes of money to support them. Now, I know that for a fact. I must tell you it was a sad wake-up call for me, because I really did not believe that it happened in that way. So in a way I am more disillusioned because when we speak of people making choices, I know that a lot of it is bribery, and I say without fear that the levels of bribery of the electorate are shocking.

The people say, "Ms. Haughton, yuh nah buy de liquor?" I say, "Me? No man, mi nuh buy beer so man can pass it out round the corner. You have any idea of how many children in this country not going to school? If I have a dollar, it's to help the youth to go to school. I not inna the liquor business with oonu. Straight up." And it is expected, so that has saddened me. And, maybe if I knew this is how it was one year ago, I would have thought twice.

BIG BUSINESS OWNS POLITICS

I believe in the State funding elections. Right now, we are being held hostage by big businesses, they own the politics. Politics is what gives the poor an opportunity to be heard, and when the politics is bought by men, and I repeat, by men in the back rooms of the world with long pockets, who determine who our

Government is by how much money, it is dangerous.

Our politics is a hostage to special interest in today's Jamaica, and that is not democracy; it belies the very notion of democracy. So I think it is imperative that we develop an appropriate regime for the state funding of elections and to control the amount of money that any one set of people can give to political parties. It is dangerous.

It attacks the body politic and it means you can buy and bribe and call it a democracy. We are digging a deep grave for ourselves if we continue to make our politics hostage to special interest, because that's all it is today.

OUTDATED STATE

It is clear to us that governance today is stale and barely 20th century. It is clear, for example, our state needs to be modernised. Transparency and accountability are things that Jamaicans speak about and we believe the technology is the first step to doing this.

We really need a modern streamlined bureaucracy on line. For example, I should be able to apply for subdivision approval and to follow it through every department, seeing the cost and knowing exactly when to go and get it.

All contracts signed by the Government should be put on line. We shouldn't be crying to know what contract is signed. The rule should be after five days it should be on line.

We shouldn't have to apply to anybody for what is our business. Of course, there are always matters that the state does not make public for national security reasons, and we have to understand that. Our position is that the state needs to justify why not.

And so, we believe a modern streamlined bureaucracy would really expose us to transparency. Where there is transparency people are going to be held to account and it is going to be clear who is responsible for what. So that we put that as a very important tool of modernisation of the state.

NATIONAL SECURITY

We also understand national security. We know, because we think and we understand that when you live in a nation and you do not feel safe, then you attack the very root of progress, order, prosperity. So that the state needs to move with some alacrity to create a sense of safety with citizens. That means modernising how we police.

For us that means the use of technology; from cameras in public spaces through to having a faculty of law enforcement and criminology endowed at the University of Technology, where every Jamaican detective is required to complete and enjoin with the appropriate qualifications and you complete.

INDEPENDENT BODY TO INVESTIGATE THE POLICE

We also need an independent body to investigate police. For example, we feel every police shooting of a citizen in this country should be investigated by an independent body of investigators and they should not come out of the police. Justice must not only be done but must also appear to be done, and citizens need to develop confidence in the rule of law and confidence comes from a sense that you can get justice

EDUCATION

Now, we also know that education; and we contend that we are the ones, this party, this small party, that put education back on to be an issue in this nation. For the last 13 years there was not a peep out of anyone, neither Opposition nor Government about our duty to provide quality education to every Jamaican child.

The United People's Party raised this issue; it is interesting to see how everybody ran with it. We contend that compulsory education up to the high school level is the duty and responsibility of the State. We also contend that people should not be required to pay a fee for high school education.

You know, we have reached the stage in the world where we believe it is all right to sell water and to say if you can't afford it do without.

There are certain things in this world that are mandatory to the existence and development of human beings. Water is one, education is another, access to health care yet another.

The state has a responsibility to fund the education of all the children of this nation up to high school level. We commit to doing this and we see how it can be done when we add the figures of dollars made out of gambling in this country. Billions of dollars made its profits from gambling in this country, and the only purpose gambling serves is for social re-engineering, from where we sit.

You are hardly creating additional wealth. You are hardly creating additional goods and services and, therefore, for us the most important function of this growing and multiplying activity is to use it to socially re-engineer, and the first thing we need to do is to use it to fund quality education for every Jamaican child. We do not in any way accept that we cannot afford it.

We always say if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

We believe that this nation pays a dear price for ignorance from the amount of money that we pay in our hospitals for emergency surgery because of the chopping and shootings that becomes a part of national life. We pay a very dear price because we have not educated our people, and we suspect that Barbados is ahead of us today because Barbados has taken the time to educate its citizens.

So we propose a longer school day, not necessarily more academics, but that the rest of the school days be used to resocialise our children. We would like to see things like martial arts developed in our schools to begin to deal with aggression, being dealt with in a creative and positive way, like a whole martial arts programme has developed for a lot of programmes.

We would like to see us moving in the direction of our clubs, and a lot of that activity done after 2:00 o'clock.

Agriculture

Of course, for us, for farming, rural development is also crucial. We see Jamaica needs to move to organic agriculture. We can't produce quantity, we have to produce quality.

Quality for us means - and it's also of course an incremental addition to tourism. Come to Jamaica and eat clean food would work. So that means having certifiers certifying our soils and moving in the direction where the money is in agriculture. We also need to look at fisheries in terms of enhancing our seas. It was done in Miami, it's done in many other places.

Jamaica is more water than it is land, actually. So in brief those are basically the three plans as well as looking at the bureaucracy.