Melville CookeAS SMALL as it was, last week's march by UWI students on Jamaica House (close to it, anyway) was a matter of some concern to the ruling (not governing) People's National Party (PNP).
Less than 100 students from the university participating in the march is the not so proverbial drool in the proverbial bucket, but in this case a swallow can the summer make.
The Guild of Undergraduates of the Mona Campus has been, shall we put it mildly, very kind to the PNP over the past 13 or so years. Of course, there was the march on Jamaica House during the gas riots, but, that apart, the guild has not given the PNP much trouble.
In fact, quite a few members of its leadership have become prominent members of the PNP, including Kern Spencer, the then president of the guild when the gas riot march took place. PJ Patterson's adviser, Delano Franklyn, is also a former guild president; PNPYO top man Basil Waite was a member of the guild executive via chairmanship of Chancellor Hall (where I resided previously) and Floyd Morris was in the mix as well.
The graduation from guild to politics has not been restricted to the PNP, as Christopher Tufton, also a former guild president, went on to the National Democratic Movement (NDM) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). With that infamous slip in St. James where he advised the Labourites to put their mark beside the 'head', before correcting himself, who knows what may happen?
In addition, I can remember the JLP's Andrew Holness running for the guild president position and losing (he has had much better fortunes on the big stage). That year the Chancellor Hall (where he also resided) was uncharacteristically split, as another Chancellorite ran for the position. The other person did not get it either.
There have been others, but those are they who I remember off-hand.
It would be natural that leaders at the top tier of the local education system would move on to be part of the country's political system. However, I believe the influence goes way deeper than that. UWI Mona Campus elections take money serious money to run. Many of the candidates' posters are of the high-level glossy calibre; the teams are equipped to mobilise their voters and it has not been unknown for a little lubricant to grease the machinery and motivate voters to go to the polls. Because there, just as in the more real Jamaica, voter apathy exists.
I believe that it is not strictly a case of leaders coming to the fore at UWI and then being recruited by the country's major political parties. I believe that it is also a case of said leaders being cultivated and actively (read cash and kind) supported by the political parties. Not in all cases, naturally.
Of course, I am way past UWI days, an old fogey, and have no contact with it now. But the executive of the Guild of Undergraduates does not, traditionally, have the reputation for being the most incorruptible of organisations, or the most accountable. There was a great story which preceded even my days and was handed down on the seat of higher learning, a lyming bench on Chancellor Hall.
It came from the days when UWI Carnival was UWI Carnival big, exciting and inexpensive. When the last wine had been popped and the last bottle of liquor uncapped, it was time to tot up the figures. An anomaly of $30,000 presented itself and the person in question was asked to account for the expenditure.
"It was for ice," he said. "An whe de ice dey?" he was asked. He leaned back, look at the persons asking the questions as if they were idiots, shrugged and said (gently, as if to simpletons): "It melt."
A so me get it, so me give it, boss. Wud fi wud (well, almost). Of course, especially in those days when the Jamaican dollar was less that 6:1 against the greenback, that amount of ice melting would have caused a tidal wave to flow towards the Kingston waterfront.
I wonder if that is what is happening to the PNP and the UWI guild, if its goodwill with that organisation is melting a bit. A couple double handful of students dripping towards Jamaica House is not a flood, but there is always a little snow before the avalanche really gets going.
(I was also told tales of a previous march, the one against the cess of the then JLP government and its attendant police whippings).
And, in this case, not an avalanche in terms of multiple marches of masses of students, but the leadership core of the UWI Mona Campus' students heading away from the PNP. Seeing that their premise for marching was not mismanagement by only the comrades, but disgust with the entire political system, then maybe it is not a matter of choosing another party over the PNP, but a genuine concern for Jamaica's future (please, could y'all stop laughing? I am trying to write, goddammit).
I can understand the PNP's disappointment and concern. It is a bit like somebody switching the "H" and "C" nozzles on the shower around.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
