Dawn RitchIN HIS column last Sunday promoting the succession of Bruce Golding, Ian Boyne wrote "Nor should it matter to us, as citizens, whether a person is a 'Rock-stone Labourite' from the Bustamante stock. Keep that for your internal party games and group speak. Back weh wid dat."
In the same column he disparages the whole idea of giving service to either political party, and says it ought not to confer any legitimacy whatsoever in the leadership sweepstakes.
Not surprisingly therefore he writes "We in the media corps seem to have largely settled on Peter Phillips and Bruce Golding as the best contenders for leadership of the two main political parties."
What madness is this? How can it not matter that candidates who seek to lead a party should also have done something to help build it, and the country they want to lead?
JOURNALISTIC DISINTEREST
These two parties are arguably the two most important institutions in the country, regardless of what one might think of the current or past leadership of either. They affect the minutiae of the lives of every citizen, above all when in office. Succession to their leadership therefore can hardly be a trivial matter or process. Nor should the histories and cultures of either be an issue of journalistic disinterest.
In regard to 'Rock-stone Labourites' for example, among these are the people who fought the State of Emergency, the Green Bay Massacre, the Massop Enquiry where police were charged for his murder because there were bullets in his armpits. This is just some of the work of rockstone Labourites (RSLs) that allow Mr. Boyne and others to enjoy freedom of speech, and express themselves in English rather than Spanish.
RSLs, like Audley Shaw, have been vigilantly monitoring public administration and exposing corruption. Without his work we wouldn't be able to understand why our taxes keep climbing while the quality of life declines precipitously.
Mr. Boyne will therefore be greatly disappointed to know that these RSLs in the party have a lot of talk as to how the party is run, and who will succeed Edward Seaga. They are the delegates.
This is why there is an underground political campaign currently being waged in the JLP on behalf of Bruce Golding. There are slated to be three challenges to deputy leadership positions at their next annual conference. Now that Peralto is back from sick leave these attempts at building a power base for Bruce in the party Secretariat are likely to fall apart.
Boyne is right on one thing. The media is by and large very pro-PNP, and so are its analysts. From Don Robotham through to Professor Brian Meeks, Mark Wignall, Cliff Hughes, Anthony Abrahams, Ian Boyne and D.K. Duncan, they all encouraged Bruce to form a third party. All of them except for D.K. Duncan who later joined the NDM and put his money where his mouth was, failed to even vote for Bruce.
By 2002 Bruce was back in the JLP. But that did not persuade them to vote JLP in the last General Election. Mark Wignall had the courage to admit that he voted PNP. This leaves the public to wonder seriously whether or not this apparent support for Bruce is not part of some masterful plan to try and fool the people into thinking that the JLP is a divided party.
On the other hand there is the motive of Big Business. Late last year I had a meeting with a banker who gave me great insight into that motive when out of the blue he warned me not to say anything uncomplimentary about Bruce Golding in my column in future.
SAY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
He said "Dawn, you have a lot of work left in your body and if you know what's good for you you'll say absolutely nothing. He is going to be JLP Leader and Prime Minister, and if you get in the way you'll never work again in this country."
It's a good thing therefore that my earning a living has never depended on my contacts in either party. What this demonstrates is that money wants Bruce Golding, while the pro-PNP media plays its game in the hope of keeping the PNP for a fifth term and fooling people into thinking that the JLP is divided. But, as I've always said, Bruce's record of service to his party and the nation leaves a lot to be desired at best, and is undistinguished at worst.
Where does Edward Seaga stand in all of this? He has failed to allow a clear successor to emerge. Nor has he given his support to a credible group of successors such as Audley Shaw, Abe Dabdoub, Ken Baugh or Karl Samuda, who resigned as a PNP Minister of State to return to an opposition party in 1995. Rock-stone Labourites all, Mr. Boyne.
The million-dollar question is whether or not Mr. Seaga will decline nomination as JLP Leader. Every year at party conference all leadership posts are made vacant. Anyone is free to nominate, but no one wishes to appear to be pushing out a leader for whom they have so much respect. So the question continues to be when will he announce that he is no longer available for nomination?
Surely he realises that the party will continue to support him rather than to 'diss' him. It is precisely because of this intense loyalty that he must allow the process of change to begin.
