Peta-Gay Ferguson | If you want to talk about Jamaica, let us talk

It appears that Senator Abka Fitz-Henley has developed a penchant for cutting and pasting the same tired sermon of his opinion of the People’s National Party (PNP). Having apparently run out of material, allow me to assist him with a subject worthy of his next column: the state of Jamaica after a decade under the Government of which he is a senator and chief political communicator.

The senator asks whether an “anti-Jamaica culture” has overtaken the PNP. Perhaps he has confused patriotism with loyalty to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). They are not the same.

So let us talk about Jamaica.

Let us talk about Jamaicans still struggling to rebuild after Melissa, some living beneath tarpaulins while relief moves at a pace incompatible with their suffering. The auditor general found that of approximately $1.44 billion donated for Hurricane Melissa relief, only $26 million, or 1.8 per cent, had been spent by February 2026. Funds donated following Hurricane Beryl also remained unspent. Thank God for patriotic Jamaicans and others who provided urgent help to the West while the Government twiddled its thumbs.

Let us talk about the 55 per cent of Jamaicans facing moderate or severe food insecurity, including approximately 28 per cent experiencing severe food insecurity. Meanwhile, farmers are being put out to pasture as Jamaica’s annual food import bill has risen to approximately US$1.46 billion, accounting for more than 60 per cent of food consumed. Perhaps the senator could list who holds those import licences.

Let us talk about healthcare: overcrowded facilities, shortages of staff and resources, the seemingly endless rehabilitation of Cornwall Regional Hospital, and Jamaicans spending hours or days waiting, even dying as they wait for care. Reports this year highlighted claims that no public hospital had a functioning MRI machine, forcing some patients to seek diagnostic services privately. Imagine that additional burden on a struggling Jamaican.

Let us talk about crime. INDECOM investigated 311 fatal shootings by members of the security forces in 2025, the highest number since 2010 and approximately 65 per cent higher than the previous year. Yet INDECOM was still expressing concern about the failure to prioritise body-worn cameras during planned police operations.

SOEs

Meanwhile, this administration repeatedly reached for states of public emergency (SOEs). In 2025, the Constitutional Court ruled that multiple SOEs declared between 2018 and 2023 were unconstitutional. One Jamaican detained for 154 days without charge under the 2019 SOE was awarded $5 million after the court found his constitutional right to liberty had been breached.

Let us talk about Clifton. In October 2022, Prime Minister Andrew Holness called the impending demolition a “watershed moment” and said it should serve as “an example and a warning and a caution to Jamaicans”. Yet a year earlier, his housing minister was promising a comprehensive squatter management policy to address informal settlements and facilitate access to safe, legal, and affordable housing. Jamaicans watched their homes come crashing down in 2022 and again in 2026. Perhaps Senator Fitz-Henley can cut and paste the policy so that Jamaicans can finally see the plan.

Let us talk about sovereignty and access to justice. After 188 years of Emancipation and 64 years of Independence, this Government remains unwilling to transition to the Caribbean Court of Justice, a regional court Jamaica helped to establish and fund yet leaves Jamaicans dependent on a final court thousands of miles away in Britain. The irony is glaring: on March 25, 2026, Britain abstained as 123 countries voted at the United Nations to declare the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. Why cling to London while final appellate justice remains beyond the financial reach of many Jamaicans? Independence must mean more than a flag, an anthem, and an annual celebration.

And since the senator wants to interrogate history for what is supposedly “anti-Jamaican”, perhaps we should go there, too. Remember Coral Gardens, Senator? Under the JLP Government of Sir Alexander Bustamante, Rastafarians were rounded up, detained, beaten, and forcibly trimmed following the infamous instruction attributed to Bustamante to “bring in all Rastas, dead or alive”. Remember Walter Rodney? In 1968, the JLP Government of Hugh Shearer barred the UWI lecturer from returning to Jamaica as he engaged ordinary Jamaicans around African history, race, and black consciousness, during a period when Black Power and left-wing literature were also banned. History has a long memory, Senator. If we invoke it, let us tell all of it.

Would the senator care to discuss Jamaica’s prime minister, whose statutory declarations have remained uncertified since 2021 or sitting Cabinet members turning to the courts over matters arising from Integrity Commission investigations? Surely that deserves a column too.

Let us talk about atrocious roads that have become an Olympic sport for motorists, water shortages, teacher migration, homelessness, and auditor general reports exposing weaknesses in the management of taxpayers’ money.

This is Jamaica. Creating a climate where Jamaicans fear speaking about their country’s problems because they may be bullied, attacked, or branded “anti-Jamaican” is itself profoundly anti-Jamaican.

Patriotism is not silence while your Government fails. It is not wrapping incompetence in the flag and calling criticism anti-Jamaican. Nor is it demanding unquestioning loyalty while refusing to account for 10 years of executive power.

So Senator Fitz-Henley, after 10 years of JLP government, Jamaicans are entitled to ask a far more consequential question: What has your Government done with Jamaica?

There should be enough material there for your next column. No cutting and pasting required.

Peta-Gay Ferguson is the PNP YO general secretary.