THE EDITOR, Sir:
IT IS with great interest that I read an article in The Gleaner of Friday, March 11, 2005 on page A8 headlined "Bruce and the bouncer".
What interested me most was Bruce Golding's response to Rev. Garnett Roper's question, asking him to inform the gathering of his track record as a Cabinet minister and a Member of Parliament, and more recently, as leader of the National Democratic Movement.
Mr. Golding stated, among other things, that the answer to the question of his track record should be left to the electorate.
BEATEN AND EVICTED
Well Mr. Golding, I am one of the young electorate, born October 18, 1980, just two weeks before the election of October 30, 1980.
I was born at Spanish Town Hospital. My mother was a housewife and my father a government employee.
For whatever their sins, my parents had a mortgage on a house at Tawes Pen with the Ministry of Housing.
My parents have two other children, one three years old and the other 18 months at the time.
Their mortgage was up to date. As I came to realise, however, all three children, my mother and father, plus several other persons who had legal and legitimate mortgages with the Ministry of Housing were evicted, beaten and battered.
Every time my mother relates this story, she breaks down in tears.
My father died a year later, his death caused by the deep distress he experienced after such an ordeal in Tawes Pen.
PUBLIC QUESTIONS
Mr. Golding, we, the young voters between 18 and 25 years old, would have only experienced our first nine years of life when the Jamaica Labour Party was in government.
I would like to ask you the following questions, so you can respond publicly.
Were you appointed a Senator and Minister of Housing after the 1980 General Election?
If the answer is in the affirmative, will you tell this nation and the young electorate what you did as Minister of Housing to see that persons who had legal rights to houses in Tawes Pen got back their houses that hoodlums and vagabonds illegally captured?
Mr. Golding, as I read this letter to my mother, she advised me to make sleeping dogs lie.
As I know her to be a devoted Christian, I reminded her of the teaching in the Bible: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".
DRAWING INFERENCES
As my mother dried her tears and walked away to her room, she said the name of the place was Nicholson Gardens, which was named after a deceased People's National Party councillor who had developed the area.
Mr. Golding, should I draw reasonable inferences that those persons at Tawes Pen (Nicholson Gardens) who had legal mortgages in 1980 before the elections, suffered the consequences of a non-caring Minister of Housing, between November 1980 and February 1989 because Tawes Pen (Nicholson Gardens) was perceived to be a PNP area?
I am, etc.,
JAMES W. SMITH
smithjw007@yahoo.com
Gregory Park P.O.
St. Catherine
