Take politics out of social spending

THE EDITOR: Despite being under increasing personal threat by the escalating crime situation, the business elite, only on very rare occasions, raise their heads from the sand to take a look at the larger picture in an effort to understand the forces that threaten to assail their profits and personae. Jeremy Matouk’s recent speech was one such rare occasion, the previous being a speech by Arthur Lok Jack in which he commented on the dearth of blacks in the business community — and stopped right there. Matouk has to be complimented for his attempt to delve deeper into a subject that most businessmen either fail to understand or choose not to because, I suspect, what it will take to change the reality would be unacceptable to their ideology and ethic. Matouk however must be corrected particularly for his general statement about poverty alleviation programmes and his attempt to build a relationship between crime, Government and the little people, while completely ignoring the reality of the relationship between crime, Government and big business.

The statement he made about the drug economy being larger than the national economy is probably true but he also has to be honest and acknowledge that nowhere in East Port-of-Spain are the proceeds from a fraction of this large drug economy visible. Simple deductive logic will lead him to where it is and he should speak about that. His argument that state funds spent on social programmes end up buying drugs and guns and funding crime, and would be better spent “educating young people away from a life of crime,” is not altogether supported by the evidence. There was a Nobel prize winning economist from the USA (not a place of socialist ideologies) who some two years ago on a visit to this country, made the observation that Government underspends on socially related programmes. Besides this, countries like the USA and most of those in Europe, including the UK, have social programmes that would put ours to shame.

The essential difference is that they are not “make work” programmes that destroy the national work ethic and psychologically debilitate participants. These programmes are also not politicised and not used in order to keep the poor supportive of and beholden to the Party in power (Mr Matouk should be reminded of the heavy spending by successive Governments on similar programmes for businesspeople, excluding Mr Matouk of course, which, like the social programmes, are also politicised and organised to keep these businesspeople supportive of and beholden to the Party in power). Mr Matouk could have been critical of these aspects of the programmes and not dismissive of the programmes, as he was reported to be. He also would have been more correct if he had made his criticisms along these lines and suggested ways to have Government increase, direct/distribute and de-politicise its social spending.

It has been repeated many times over by the experts, that most crimes are drug related and/or funded by the proceeds from drugs. I would suggest to Mr Matouk that he applies his suggestion about educating people away from a life of drugs to those who are responsible for the drug trade. To the prospective victims, drugs are a class and culture thing, and along with that goes a series of other factors which education, without many other inputs, will not seriously impact. Mr Matouk’s clear but probably unintended bias was more evident in what he chose not to say rather than what he said, and the reluctance of even the enlightened, like him, to admit to the obvious truth about the link between drugs, crime, Government and big business is more than reason for continuing, and indeed, increasing despair among citizens — and despair, in many instances, is what drives the poor and dispossessed to crime and violence.

EUGENE A REYNALD
Port of Spain