Melville Cooke I HAD PROMISED myself to write this column on Tuesday, but that dratted late Stone poll spoiled the plan, because I was going to burn a fire on Edward Seaga, close polls or not. Now, with the Gleaner poll on Sunday, the PNP's internal poll and the latest Stone poll on Tuesday pointing to a sizeable lead for the ruling party, that wouldn't take much, would it?
The way things are looking, the only showers of significance today (Wednesday) will be the ones giving me that cosy sound on the zinc roof. Anyway, politics is like cricket anything can happen and, when this is published, Eddie may have secured a historic comeback.
I did not vote yesterday. I stayed at home, wrote a couple stories, got a glimpse of Jamaica equalising with Japan in that football friendly, read "Bonfire of the Vanities", listened to Burning Spear combine with the rain on the roof and watched television. I already outlined why I refuse to vote in a couple articles some time ago and that has not changed.
If anything, that Bruce Golding "reswitch", along with the defection of the NDM's hierarchy, has reaffirmed my disaffection with Jamaican politics. Christopher Tufton's slip in Montego Bay, exhorting the crowd to vote for the 'head', is funny but serious. The way Jamaican politicians switch sides, we may yet see the NDM crew moving on to the PNP. Morris Cargill had called them a bowel movement, to which I add loose. After all, fluids do take the shape of their containers.
This election has underlined what a waste of time the JLP under Edward Seaga is. With all the waste and downright thievery under the PNP government, the dumping of the street people in St. Elizabeth, the killings in Braeton and in West Kingston, along with the "enquiries" which followed, the JLP should be a shoo-in. That they are not and had to go back for Bruce Golding, shows how weak they are.
I am not into Jamaican politics and politicians at all, but I have a special place reserved in my personal Hall of Political Infamy for Edward Seaga. My country, this little dot that I love so much, was torn apart by political war in the run-up to the 1980 election. It was a part of the global battle between the United States and the former USSR.
Manley was the socialist, Eddie the non-socialist (to put it mildly). Over 800 people died and the JLP won. I remember the countdown to deliverance and if that is what the passage to heaven is like I had better repent, because I do not want to see the road to hell.
No matter how much I am anti-Seaga, I cannot bring myself to vote for the PNP. The JLP and the PNP come from the same root and are like the two Tainos on the National Coat of Arms. They are slightly different, but at the end of the day the same thing. They both operate on the premise that most Jamaicans have been educated for the Free Zone, the canefield and domestic work which is true, actually. They both exist to maintain the country's basic infrastrucure at a non-riot level, while ensuring that the rich are not threatened in any way.
And now, I am gone to enjoy the rain. May all the party faithful out in the rain at the behest of their misleaders catch the flu.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
