Dawn Ritch
THIS COLUMN has noted before that politics is a man's world, and not a woman's. For one thing it is dirty, and ladies are not supposed to get dirty. For another and more compelling reason it requires an inordinate strength of character which people find generally repellent in females.
Columnist Tamara Scott-Williams last week in the Jamaica Observer wrote scathingly of two incidents in the political careers of PNP Portia Simpson Miller and JLP Babsy Grange. She said that they got angry and 'lifted their skirts'.
Neither did. Mrs. Simpson Miller always wears pants on the campaign trail and so does Ms. Grange.
'Lifted their skirts' is, therefore, a figure of speech and the most degrading thing to say about women. Far more degrading than my describing the Most Honourable as being impertinent towards the United States, because this implies no sexual misconduct on his part.
PROTECTING PRINCIPLES
What did Mrs. Simpson Miller and Ms. Babsy Grange do? During the last General Election Audley Shaw in effect accused Mrs. Simpson Miller of covering up financial misconduct at the JTB, and protecting person or persons unknown.
Here is a lady that had no previous reputation for protecting anybody, except the poor and the defenceless. Nobody has bought her silence in any matter that has ever come to public light.
Nor have there ever been any rumours of either her professional or personal financial misconduct. Who wouldn't get angry at the sheer politics of Shaw's accusation, since it was Mrs. Simpson Miller who in the first place instigated the investigation to which he referred.
So from a public platform a female politician shouted a warning to her male opponent in a deadly voice, "Don't draw mi tongue!?!"
Her tongue was not drawn, neither then nor later. She did not permit it to be drawn. Nor did she use a single expletive, referring instead to 'your little, dirty, nasty, slimy politics'. And indeed the impugning of her integrity and professionalism was all these things, and worse.
Fake middle-class values have since condemned her outburst. And it's disappointing to see Mrs. Scott-Williams bringing up this dreary point of view two years later.
During which time Mrs. Simpson Miller's tongue has not been drawn, and the length and breath of the financial troubles of a business partly run by Mr. Shaw were revealed by his own actions in taking his matter to the court. Meantime dismissal, ruled wrongful, and resignations, generally acclaimed, have taken place at the JTB.
Should Mrs. Simpson Miller have been more ladylike on that fateful day and said instead 'Mr. Shaw, you're being totally preposterous at every single level?' That would have been appropriate for a private meeting between them. Which this was not.
She stood for something publicly, her own integrity, but Mrs. Scott-Williams accuses her of buying favour with the Most Honourable so that she can be his deputy. The columnist both degrades and underestimates Mrs. Simpson Miller, because she doesn't even want to be President. She intends to be Prime Minister of Jamaica one day, no less.
Mrs. Scott-Williams is part of one of the most stalwart JLP families in the country.
The Williams family Shirley and her brother Louis backs Bruce Golding as the next Leader of the JLP.
By attempting to tar so disgracefully Mrs. Simpson Miller, the potential next President of the People's National party, and Ms. Babsy Grange, staunch supporter of Opposition Leader Edward Seaga, the question of the columnist's independence must be raised.
All the more since she ridicules the two women for taking a firm public stand on something that matters. In Ms. Grange's case, the need for greater courtesy and unity within the JLP. A cartoon even characterises her as tearing out tufts of her hair about this. Well might she do so.
Not a single expletive was heard from Ms. Grange at the podium. I am told her voice was calm even while she was being heckled. I have no doubt her tone was as ugly as a trained voice, one of her attributes, could make it. When Bobby Montague accosted her near the doorway as she was leaving, she didn't flatten him, although any man would have.
Since then the young turks have been behaving themselves in meetings. Following Ms.Grange's outburst, there has been notably less heckling of the older members, or so-called traditionalists in the party. It is too soon, however, to say whether the reformists, or the newcomers from the NDM, have begun to behave like lambs.
There is no doubt that some of their comments have been choice. This is no excuse for the Party Chairman Bruce Golding to have refused to afford Babsy Grange the protection of the chair when she came under sustained attack on her own and fateful day. He did not take a stand, but she did, and the party is stronger for it.
GOLDING'S MODUS OPERANDI
It's a little rich, therefore, for Bruce Golding days later, having stood back then, to be saying the right things now. Because when he had a chance to make a difference, he did nothing. Nevertheless this is the modus operandi of the proposed successor to Edward Seaga. Pity the country that finds itself in the hands of this man.
This is the 'decorum' that Mr. Golding has, and which people like Mrs. Scott-Williams find so appealing. They also like that about Dr. Peter Phillips too. Neither camp minds that both men are consummate non-performers. Brown men both, and all the world's a sucker for a brown man from a good social background.
This is a necessary evil. But any properly-functioning elite always welcomes outside members so that their ranks can be strengthened. Black men from humble backgrounds can become members on their own merit, but rarely a black woman.
That woman becomes all the more remarkable because she's an exception. Portia Simpson Miller and Babsy Grange are exceptions. Anybody who has ever had a meeting with either can attest to their high level of intelligence and diplomacy.
But as I said last week, the Jamaican elite has become a pale shadow of its former self. They have become introspective and withdrawn. They have left the field to the purveyors of fake middle class values, those who would convince us that standing quietly for nothing is a better alternative than standing firm for what is right.
