DAWN RITCHIF HE DID nothing else, what Edward Seaga established was that if you asked him a question, you'd get the truth whether you liked it or not.
Diplomacy was not his strong point. The ultimate outsider, Edward Seaga gave up on that from birth. On the wind of his first breath, his nose went up in the air, sniffing out all the possibilities. There it has remained.
By his own admission, in his final speech to Parliament, his political career came full circle. He has ended as he began, on the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. He said the political leadership, including himself, had failed to move the country forward.
LOT OF TWADDLE
What a lot of twaddle from such a bright man. But that is the political culture today. You're not allowed to say anything of possible importance, unless it first begins with a mea culpa.
Nobody cares whether the apology is poppycock or not, because any apology can make the greatest demon a saint in the public perception. Or so they say. Therefore, even that great colossus Seaga has fallen upon his sword.
This is an irredeemable consequence of his seeing all the possibilities, to say nothing of the opportunities and consequences. One, therefore, becomes a wagga wagga bird, flying around in ever decreasing circles right up a certain part of one's anatomy.
It is deeply disappointing to see that great statesman, while prime minister, today disavow his own work in the 1980s. And I will not follow him into such an utterly nonsensical hole.
In his final parliamentary speech, Seaga allowed political correctness to win the day, something he had never done. That in my view, is what deserves an apology.
Had he been that kind of person before last week, I doubt that the young television camera team and interviewer from a local medium would have asked him the question they did a few months before the last General Election in 2002.
While they were setting up for the
taping in his office, one of them asked: "Mr. Seaga, is it true that at the Independence Ceremony in 1962, the Jamaica flag hitched on its way up the flag pole? That it sort of bucked?"
Everybody's ears pricked up. All of five or six young heads turned toward him. The then Opposition leader replied that our flag went up without a hitch, and unfurled beautifully. He knows, because he made all the arrangements as a young Cabinet minister.
I will never forget the palpable feeling of relief which rippled through the young people and their rapid-fire
general discussion afterwards. Nor the complete absence of fear in how they approached the 'Great Demon of Tivoli'. And, above all, their full confidence that they would be given a truthful answer by Seaga.
Now that he's spoken like this in Parliament last week, what on earth is he going to tell his students at the University of the West Indies? That Sir Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley, Michael Manley, Hugh Shearer, Edward Seaga .... all the latter's predecessors failed?
This is total foolishness. The financial and social problems in Jamaica were caused in the first place by the government's flirtation with communism in the 1970s, and the consequent collapse of the Jamaican economy.
But the greater blow was the annihilation of the island's central nervous
system in the destruction of the domestic financial sector in the mid-1990s. This completely reversed a process of Jamaicanisation that had gone on since the 1970s.
Both policy mistakes set life back for the working class people of this country by generations. And a Jamaican dollar that had been stronger than Cayman, became a shadow of its former self, along with the lives of the majority of people in this benighted island.
EXPLAINING ONE'S FAILURES
But Michael Manley, while prime minister, gave this country a sense of affirmation, and permission to be our glorious selves, even if it got out of control which of course any such licence must without strong leadership.
This is a quality that Manley did not evince, nor his successor P. J. Patterson. Disastrous mistakes were made, for which each of us now bears the consequence in the unbelievable murder rate that now obtains.
It has become the fashion these days for every departure to be accompanied by a bucketful of dirty water thrown on those left behind. And now as usual, bettered by Seaga's throwing it on all who came before and since.
It is complete nonsense to try to explain one's current political failures by claiming that it is the failures of
others, either before or after, in the same category of persons. An intellectual incestuousness is thereby unleashed which is quite futile. To say nothing of being singularly unhelpful.
I, therefore, prefer to think that the outgoing Opposition leader was overcome by the emotion of the occasion.
But that may not be the case. When he was asked by his colleagues in the JLP, to contemplate his departure from the party in the early 1990s, Seaga said publicly that there was no one there competent enough to succeed him. Now that he leaves representational politics, he takes on all his predecessors, including two National Heroes, the founders of independent Jamaica.
It is not that this country has failed to move forward it is that the island has in vital respects moved backwards. A consequence of two bad policies.
But neither of these were the faults of our founding fathers, nor are they uncorrectable not as long as we insist on the truth, and damn political correctness.
It is also a great help in the long run, to remember that no one is indispensable
and that resolute and sensible action
is the best antidote to a lifetime of recriminations.
I, therefore, wish Seaga an early return to his former self.
