Dawn Ritch, ContributorThis appears to be yet another season of Bruce Golding. His possible return to the Jamaica Labour Party is being publicly supported by certain interests.
The irony is, of course, that in the first place, it was they who encouraged Mr. Golding to leave the party a few years ago. Now that the JLP is ahead in the polls, however, with Opposition Leader Edward Seaga firmly tipped as the man best suited to run the country, these interests are having a panic attack.
Many captains of industry and commentators, myself included, thought the JLP back then was destined only to become a footnote in Jamaican history. Wracked by the Gang of Five and a consequent shedding of its then second-tier leadership, the JLP had become a laughing stock in Jamaica, and Seaga, a mere anachronism.
Desperate to resolve the country's leadership crisis, powerful interests persuaded Mr. Golding to set up a third party that was to be "new and different". So off he went to found the National Democratic Movement as a political party to field candidates for political office.
I knew it wouldn't work from the start, and promptly said so. Indeed, I suggested at the time that Bruce was no Lorna, and had his wife been in charge, there might be some hope for the NDM. Alas, she was not, and the Movement utterly failed to move the hearts and minds of Jamaicans.
The most recent national Stone poll, privately commissioned by the JLP in late March, shows the NDM at 0.9 per cent. That's less than 1 per cent in the national party standings. The JLP is at 28.2 per cent, and the PNP at 22.5 per cent.
Asset
So why are we talking about Bruce Golding, with some describing him as a tremendous potential asset to the JLP? While it is true that Mr. Golding recently resigned as president of the NDM, it would be churlish to ascribe responsibility for its precipitous decline solely to its current president, Hyacinth Bennett. Its lack of performance and its poll numbers show that Mr. Golding was not an asset even to the NDM.
Not an asset either was its political platform of constitutional reform in Jamaica, a platform carefully crafted by Mr. Golding and his helpers. This was an issue with which I instantly disagreed. A Constitution crafted by certified angels in heaven would be of no use to Jamaica.
It's not constitutional reform we need, but personal reform. Laws, more of them, can't help Jamaicans because we need to help ourselves by electing honest, hard-working people to public office. Not pay them to gaze at their navels and dream up more legislation. Happily, it seems the Jamaican people are as one in the matter, and have soundly rejected the NDM.
The United People's Party headed by Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas is today's political laughing stock at 3.3 per cent, and need not detain us.
Neither should Bruce Golding, even though certain erstwhile funders of the NDM still seem to think so. Exposure and money cannot insert Bruce overnight into the JLP.
I know he was groomed to be a Prime Minister by Edward Seaga, but his work at the Ministry of Construction doesn't exactly conjure up wonderful memories. What readily comes to mind is the whole fiasco of the Forum Hotel, which ended up like a game of musical chairs, being bought and sold between the Ministry of Construction under Golding, and the Matalon companies. Mr. Golding is great, however, in front of a mike or television camera. He was after all beautifully trained.
The same poll on who is the best person to lead the JLP now reports 28.4 per cent for Edward Seaga, Audley Shaw 9.9 per cent, Bruce Golding 7.1 per cent, Pearnel Charles 3.9 per cent, and others 3.9 per cent. So why are we talking about Bruce Golding? Audley Shaw is firmly established second-tier leadership for the JLP in the minds of the people of the country.
PNP leadership succession
The People's National Party, which always likes to boast that it has more and better candidates for succession to PNP President P. J. Patterson, should carefully note that as many people as identify Pearnel Charles, identify "others" in the JLP to succeed Seaga. That looks to me like evidence of strong, emerging leadership depth within the JLP itself.
On who is the best person to lead the PNP now? The same poll reports Portia Simpson Miller 32.6 per cent, P. J. Patterson 20.6 per cent, Dr. Peter Phillips 10.9 per cent, and Karl Blythe 0.5 per cent. These figures suggest that the political party experiencing a leadership crisis is the PNP. They don't have "others" to choose from.
They effectively have only one person of substance to succeed Mr. Patterson and she will have to wait, despite the fact that she is by far the people's preference. Because they live in a fool's paradise, however, the PNP bigwigs have been trying to sell Peter Phillips all over the country, and getting as little traction on that as those trying to get Bruce Golding back into the Jamaica Labour Party.
When I line up NDM Bruce Golding, PNP Dr. Peter Phillips and JLP Audley Shaw, the only one of them worth a damn anyway is Shaw. So it's no contest, and the country seems to want a change, because the JLP is strongly ahead in the polls.
I wish, therefore, to congratulate Audley Shaw. He's not a pompous politician, and works very hard, both unusual characteristics in the traditional second-tier leadership of the JLP. The presence of "others" in his party capable of leading it in the eyes of the people augurs well for the future of the country under the next JLP Government.
So all in all, Edward Seaga is also to be congratulated because despite earlier defections in his second-tier leadership, he has now a solid second rung. And all Jamaica, including this column, once believed that it could never happen. The same poll shows 41 per cent of the sample saying that the JLP is more united than it was in the past.
Into this new happy family, some people want to insert Bruce. They will simply have to resign themselves to the fact that they missed the boat badly when they told him to leave. I think he already has, and there is no need for them to salve their consciences by continuing to make him a public spectacle.
Footnote: The Economist of March 2nd reports that Thailand's debt to GDP is 65 per cent. It also stated that prosecutors in that country have therefore charged Rerngchai Marakanond with "reckless conduct" during his stint as head of Thailand's central bank. "Under his tenure at the heart of the economic crisis in 1997", The Economist states, "the bank spent vast amounts of public money trying to defend its cherished fixed exchange policy for the baht, before eventually admitting defeat, and allowing the country's currency to float.
"The Government considers Mr. Rerngchai solely and personally responsible for the failed strategy and is suing him to recover the losses... These reforms reflect growing popular feeling (in Thailand) that public servants should be just that, and that the higher and the mightier ones need to be taken down a peg or two".
Readers should note that here in Jamaica, our debt to GDP is 150 per cent, more than double Thailand's. The central bank head responsible is Mr. Derick Latibeaudiere, Governor of the Bank of Jamaica. He is carrying out a policy framed by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, whose stated commitment throughout our economic debacle has been the defence of the Jamaican dollar.
