Pearnel Charles
(In a letter to the Editor)KINGMAKER IAN Boyne wants his colleague journalists to select the next leader of the Jamaica Labour Party. Although he believes strongly in the democratic process, he is not about to allow the delegates to select any 'Rock-stone Lab-ourite'. No working class representative, none from his or her class. Thank God Alexander Bustamante had separated us from the People's National Party (PNP) so only delegates of the JLP will have the right to vote for their next leader.
My advice to the delegates, is to select one of your peers, someone that will represent your interests, will walk the walk and talk the talk with you. Our political successors will have to be people who can pull the country together, who can energise us toward a common vision, who can imbue us with a sense of mission. Not just a mission impossible, but also a mission believable and achievable. Our leaders must be credible. Their first and overarching task is to build trust.
PRETTY-FACE SWEET-TALKERS
This will be the Mother of All Challenges. Not just pretty-face sweet-talkers expounding the best of the Queen's English, but understanding the language of the masses and feeling their emotion and their passion to be free from poverty. Sharing the feeling of those who cannot help themselves with shelter, food, an education or a skill to enable them to get a good job that guarantee them a life above the poverty line.
In choosing a successor I wish that they choose a person most likely to pull off these Herculean tasks. It will be a given that the successors will have to be one who is not just rhetorical, but practical, credible and tangible. The successors must also be one who set as a major objective the closing of the gap between the rich and the poor, not by pulling down the rich but by sensitising them to push forward and give the big pull on the poor to move up. Move the bureaucracy out the way and let them create the wealth needed to build the country and alleviate poverty. He or she must be a people person able to relate to all classes at all levels. We must not over-value the intellectual to the minimising of the effective and the passionate leader. Believe me, Jamaica will need more than intellectual and technical skills to see us through.
The first order of business for the next Prime Minister, I suggest, will not be just intellectual. It will be emotional, charismatic passion. Something of the order of Bustamante and Michael Manley's style of winning the trust of the people, convincing them that you really care, getting the people to do for themselves what they would not do under normal conditions, making them know that you are genuinely working in their interests and not just in the interest of yours and your class and friends. That takes more than head. It takes heart. The people will not be fooled any more. They have had the big school intellectuals leading since Bustamante and Shearer... only to the mountaintop and to the valley of the shadow of debt.
While I agree that heart alone can't do it, having an empathetic spirit is the beginning. Whereas the next leader can hire heads and consultants, he or she cannot purchase heart, feeling, love, passion and understanding for the people. The contenders in the two parties must have an evenly balanced mix of qualities, strengths and character that are really needed to move Jamaica forward. No matter how intellectually brilliant, technically competent or morally pure, no one will have a chance of success unless he or she has this understanding of the poor and the commitment to uplift them.
Like steel I have passed through the baptism of fire, from liquid to red hot to solid steel, never mind the colour. I have prepared myself and I am ready for the task.
Pearnel Charles is vice-president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union.
See Ian Boyne's column in the In Focus section
