IT DOESN'T matter who wins the next general election, that party will have no honeymoon and will face a real crisis the moment it takes office.Former leader of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), Bruce Golding, who has taken a self-imposed leave from politics, predicts that that party will start with a major handicap considering the situation the country now finds itself in.
"When the election is over that will be when the real difficulties start," he said in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner. "There is a crisis which awaits the next Government that will be pretty serious. Tough decisions will have to be made and ways will have to be found to mobilise the people. If there is ever a time to rally around the country that will be then."
However, Mr. Golding said, although difficult, the situation is not hopeless.
"Countries have been through worse, just look at Uganda. It can be done but there must be a total mobilisation of the national will. Our leaders will have to remain focus and more than anything else will have to put the national interest first - this is something which is sadly lacking in Jamaican politics today."
But although Mr. Golding has taken himself out of the political race, this self exile may not be permanent.
"I don't know what God has in store for me," he said. "I have asked Him the question and He is telling me that there is still work for me to do." Asked if that means that he will be back he said, chuckling, "That is what God is telling me."
Mr. Golding resigned from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in 1995 and in November later that year he formed the NDM. His departure from the JLP came about over differences with party leader Edward Seaga, a man who is still considered his mentor. But though the opinion polls were showing at the time that the country was in a mood to accommodate a third party considering the growing disaffection with both the JLP and the People's National Party (PNP), many analysts equated Mr. Golding's defection at the time to political suicide.
Mr. Golding, though, insists even today, that his leaving the JLP to form a third party was simply a willingness on his part to move away from the kind of politics which he said had destroyed "the moral fibre of the country".
"I couldn't continue to work in a system in which I was increasingly losing faith and in which the people of Jamaica are rapidly losing hope," he said.
Mr. Golding stepped down as leader of the NDM last year following a devastating by-election loss for the party in North East St. Ann on the grounds that he had to review his own leadership. Though he is still a member of the NDM, he has been out of the spotlight in recent times, occasionally making the odd appearances on the talk show circuit.
Many observers feel his self exile is only temporary and that he will be back.
But a senior JLP official who requested anonymity, said that it was his belief that Mr. Golding was finished as a political force in the country.
"The man lacks credibility," he said. "He moves wherever the tide is favourable which doesn't show a person with much conviction."
- G. D.
