Riu Hotels tiene poco que hacer en Jamaica, dada su política de internacionalización y la poca disposición del gobierno jamaicano de aceptarla, valorando más el cumplimiento de la legalidad vigente y de los intereses de su ciudadanía. De esta situación ya nos hemos hecho reflejo anteriormente (1, 2 y 3).
Reproducimos, hoy, una editorial del The Jamaica Observer en el que se apoya la política del Ministerio de Inversiones y Comercio jamaicano frente a los intereses de Riu Hotels.
The Jamaica Observer. 13 de julio de 2008
"If the Spanish armada landed on our shores with all the gold in the world, they must comply with our rules." These are the words of Industry, Investment and Commerce Minister Mr Karl Samuda, words by which he and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration will live or die.
The minister's response would have reassured Jamaicans that when we seek investment it is not about looking handouts, and therefore not that investors are doing us any favours. We believe and know that they are here to make a profit, and for our part, we seek jobs and development of our country in return. It's a partnership of mutual interest and respect.
Had Mr Samuda not been as forthright in his statement, the Spanish Ambassador, Señor Jesus "Ambassador of Marketing" Silva, would have left the press conference at which they were speaking with the mistaken notion that Jamaicans are beholden to the Spanish for their investment here.
Mr Silva had the audacity to suggest that Jamaican laws, meant to protect our people, need to be reviewed in the current business climate. We take it to mean that we must open our legs so that investors can ravage us at will. He had better guess again.
Jamaica has welcomed the Spanish, as we have other investors, because without a healthy influx of investment, economic growth will at best be anaemic. It is impatient of debate that investment projects are needed to create jobs to put more of our people to work and to provide funds for the national coffers to finance education, health, security and the rest. So let no one accuse us of being anti-investment, or even anti-Spanish.
What continues to concern us as a newspaper is the arrogance portrayed by some of the Spanish investors, especially the RIU Hotels who believe that because they have invested in Jamaica, they have a right to do as they please with our environment and to ignore our laws with impunity.
The underlying attitude is that Jamaicans are not worthy of the kind of respect they would have to give to say, Americans or Europeans, when they invest in those countries.
It was the same attitude which caused the Mexican Government to slap heavy fines on RIU and fire a mayor who was accused of accepting bribes in the tourist resort Cancun.
It is that same attitude which refuses to apologise to Jamaica for the appearance of an illegal construction plan being used to build three four-storey buildings in the flight path of the Sangster International Airport near Montego Bay, against the ruling of the state agencies charged with protecting Jamaicans.
It is the same attitude that caused Mr Tubal Brown, the building inspector at the St James Parish Council, to be under investigation for the affixing of his signature and the council's official stamp to that illegal building plan that was, incidentally, in Spanish.
And since all of us are idiots, we are expected to believe that Mr Brown, out of a largesse of spirit, sneaked into RIU's office in Madrid, spirited out the plan, signed it, stamped it and waived the $200,000 application fee, without the knowledge of the council, because he so loves RIU.
Jamaica might eventually come to thank Mr Samuda for that moment of enlightened self-interest when he refused to sell Jamaica out for 30 pieces of Spanish silver.
Like the rest of the country, we're proud of you, Karl Samuda.
Julio de 2008