After three challenging years as President of the Atlanta chapter of the KCOBA I handed the baton over to Glen Laman and quietly took my seat in the back of the room with the remaining twenty two KCOBs who attended this past Saturday’s Annual General meeting. The hand-off was nondescript and the meeting with its election for all the executive positions and three director positions went flawless and drama free. You wish all elections were this easy and peaceful.
Someone made a sarcastic comment that the ease of the election was directly proportionate to what was at stake, implying that to hold a leadership position in our organization was valueless thus the passive interest in competing for such positions. I beg to differ. It was only five years ago that these elections were bitterly contested.
Yet I don’t believe the organization was as strong as it is today, and we certainly didn’t enjoy the position of prominence we now hold. Without a doubt we are well regarded in the Caribbean community and I am told as a social organization we are well regarded and admired in the Atlanta community at large. That’s no easy feat when countless times over our eight years of existence our survival has been severely threatened. It’s a testament to our maturity and education, because I do believe when men achieve a certain level of education and maturity they seek to find compromises and not differences and confrontations.
With education they can understand opposing points of view and with maturity they can tolerate them. This is not to say that the opponents in Jamaica who are contesting the upcoming elections are neither educated nor matured. On the contrary, most are educated, but we must question their political maturity. While we can’t discount the value of what’s at stake, what is disturbing is the question of why would mature leaders allow the security and well-being of a nation to be decimated costing thousand of lives in the process and the failure of the nation just so they can become King or Queen. On the surface it seems awfully selfish, but a closer look reveal some fatalistic egotism and pathetic desperation usually displayed in immature societies with scarce spoils and a tinge of feudalism.
Here’s to hoping that the desperate leaders in our homeland can emulate the smooth election process and transition that our little group here in Atlanta was able to achieve and in the process help to re-educate a people about the value of human lives and the need to be tolerant of those with opposing views and political leanings. After all every single member of our Atlanta group is Jamaican and arrived at this incredibly peaceful position of political maturity by respecting each others views and realizing each others right to exist for the good of the entire body. So there is no doubt Jamaicans can do this, given the right leadership, philosophy and motivation. Our little nation of a tad under three million people can be managed and can be motivated to do what’s right, the desperate leaders must find the will and summon the courage, future generations are depending on you.
