Morris Cargill

IT IS reported that Eddie Seaga walked out of the funeral service for the late Dr. Ronald Irvine because he considered that he was not prominently seated. Or was it that his behaviour got him kicked out?

How small-minded can one get? If one attends the funeral of an old friend it is because presumably you want to pay tribute to his memory and not for reasons of self-aggrandisement.

Eddie Seaga suffers two contrasting disadvantages; small-mindedness on one hand and elephantiasis of the ego on the other. I will return to him in a moment, but I would like to make a small deviation.

The latest Stone Poll showed that the PNP was well ahead of the JLP in the public's opinion and that the unfortunate NDM was nowhere in sight. On the other hand, the interesting thing about this poll was that it demonstrated that the admirers of the JLP and the NDM combined would out-vote the PNP at the next General Election.

This underlines the necessity for the NDM to merge with the JLP. Bruce Golding is potentially a possible new leader in Jamaica if only he had a seat and a party. It is rather sad to see him maintaining his right to appoint scrutineers at subsequent elections, for with no party and no seat he has no more right to appoint scrutineers than I have. On the other hand, were he to join the JLP and take part in its survival the whole political climate would change.

But I fear this will never be possible so long as Eddie Seaga sticks stubbornly to his role as leader of the JLP. I do not forget Eddie's services to Jamaica over the last 25 years, nor do I forget his splendid work in the 1980 General Election or his rescue of our economy thereafter from the ruins of the 70s. But during the last few years he has been bringing about the downfall of the JLP and his role as Leader of the Opposition has been an exercise in trivialities.

To start with, he's got fingerprints on the brain and he has been messing around with issues that are not at the moment of any importance to a country which is bedevilled by financial collapses, poverty and crime. I'm sorry to say that if Eddie Seaga wishes to take his proper place in history he should now be big enough to step down and give Bruce Golding and others a fair chance of rebuilding the JLP into the great party it once was. It is a pity that Eddie Seaga seems to be incapable of overcoming the small-mindedness and egotism, which have been his dominant characteristics during the last ten years.

A surfeit of evangelists

Recently having once had the father we had the son and Franklin Graham and his salvation circus have been indulging in a saturation blitz.

Amongst other things, he created for us a sunburnt Jesus. It is a pity that The Gleaner reporter that interviewed him on the subject did not also asked him about the colour of the Holy Ghost. That might have elicited a truly remarkable reply.

Holy man

On the subject of holy men I see that South Africa has been having trouble with the Rev. Allan Boesak. The Rev. Boesak was considered one of the great spiritual leaders of South Africa but has now been found to have been perpetrating some large frauds.

My late father always used to warn me about people who were over-righteous. He said that I could be sure that they were over-compensating for a sense of guilt. In a long life I've found this to be very true. Even if the over-righteous do not necessarily defraud people they certainly seem to be over-keen on money and power and thus negative in their off-repeated assertions of Christian virtues.

One should always remember the Sermon on the Mount. But it was Thomas Mann, I think, who pointed out that while Jesus strongly resisted the temptations of the Devil, Satan won in the end. For there was one temptation he did not resist. This was the temptation of martyrdom.

End piece

A father sees his son walking with a lantern and asks, "Where are you going boy?"

The son smiled and replied, "I'm going a-courting Peggy-Sue".

The father replied, "When I went a-courting your mother I had no need of a lantern".

"Sure Pa, I know," the boy said. "And look what you got".

Morris Cargill is the Gleaner's senior columnist who has been writing for more than 45 years.