LOCAL COMMENTARY

Something approaching Nirvana - Quo Vadis?

by Andre Iton

Wednesday,  November 3, 2004

With the unbridled force of nature having visited upon us, we are now confronted with the daunting task of reconstructing our damaged society.
The din of the simplistic utterances predicting the speedy rebuilding of a “bigger and better” Cayman Islands has now largely subsided and happily so. 

At the level of the individual citizen, a desire for a hasty return to the state of affairs that existed prior to Ivan’s visitation (safe shelter, secure employment) is understandable and consequently, his/her priorities are currently being ordered to achieve these urgent and justifiable objectives.

There is a very real danger however, that in this state of individually driven haste, the reconstruction of the country is going to be narrowly defined and measured solely as a task of rebuilding the physical plant, attending to the short-term material needs of those who currently inhabit these shores and the wooing back of the “temporarily departed” amongst our “vital” economic class (read off-shore sector participants). 

Defining the national reconstruction effort in these terms is arguably premised on the belief that the pre-Ivan socio-economic order could be characterised as an equilibrium state, or something closely approaching Nirvana. 

Premised on such a belief (regrettably a fairly widespread one) the task of leadership in this post-disaster phase is simply to get us “back on course.”

Post-Ivan conditions however suggest a very different reality and consequently the situation arguably warrants focused and objective analysis, as well as broad discourse on a range of issues that are seemingly pertinent to the charting of the course forward. 

For instance, do we understand why, after more than three decades of rapid growth in a globally eminent financial centre, (the fifth largest, we are repeatedly told by those “selling” our attributes abroad) the public sector has failed to accumulate a significant level of reserves, such that they would stand us in good stead to resolutely lead our own recovery efforts in calamitous times such as these?

Do we understand why after more than thirty years of economic advancement, we have failed to develop the indigenous intellectual and managerial capabilities satisfactory for our own part, to deal with our own problems, as evidenced by the quick resort to foreign managerial capacity to lead our internal recovery effort?

Do we appreciate why externally, ordinary folks like you and I are seemingly bemused by the current local talk of economic/financial difficulties and the failure of others to come swiftly to our aid, given this small country’s, consistent classification as a High Income economy under the World Bank’s global classification system? (Less than 20 percent of the 192 countries classified, fall into this the highest category). 

How do we account for the seeming unawareness amongst the local populace of the fundamentals of a colonial relationship, in the context of the firmly held belief that such a relationship is central to our economic and social stability? 

Are our leaders going to be sufficiently astute and discerning in recognising where the seeming beneficence of financially powerful individuals, particularly so, in times such as these, may well be the result of studied cost/benefit analyses on their part and for the country as a whole, be mere “Trojan Horses”?

These are but a few of the hard questions that must be addressed as we proceed along the path to recovery.

Inevitably a national disaster/catastrophe gives rise to the need for national introspection and analysis. 

Such an outcome is not however a “natural order” phenomenon and requires strong leadership pointing in such a direction, as well as general recognition to the fact that providing honest answers to these and other relevant questions that would have come more visibly to the fore, may well necessitate significant shifts and the reordering of pre-disaster socio-economic order.

As we have done on previous occasions where the opportunity for serious national introspection has arisen, (none of the previous occasions have been as obviously calamitous) we may yet again refuse to look beneath the surface, choose alternatively to hurriedly rebuild our damaged physical structures, return to our meretricious ways and pat ourselves on our collective backs in praise of our comparative material well-being. 

In such circumstances, when inevitably the next disaster, natural or man-made, befalls us, we or our descendants, will yet again, in bewilderment be asking, ‘Quo Vadis’?

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