Dawn RitchFOUR FRONT page lead stories in a row! That must be a record.
Not on the same issue, or even
different issues. It's the kind of limelight any candidate for the highest political office in the land must relish.
The irony is of course, that the 'senior PNP insiders' who leaked the story to the press about the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) thought they were embarrassing her.
They forgot that the auditor-general had already run up a warning flag about that executive agency before. And they also conveniently overlooked the fact that the minister responsible, Mrs. Simpson Miller, had already asked NSWMA executive chairman Alston Stewart for a report.
UNPRECEDENTED ACTION
This action by 'senior PNP insiders' is unprecedented in the People's National Party. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) members have leaked to the press and joined with them against each other. But this is an act of treachery from which it is impossible to recover. Just witness the long sojourn of the JLP in the wilderness of opposition.
These anonymous PNP sources have decided, therefore, that they are prepared to destroy the PNP, just as long as they destroy Portia along with it, because they can rebuild the party. They believe she will be the only casualty in the process.
Well, it's obvious they have put the cart before the horse, and are about to lose a wheel or two. The damage to their reputation as a party is incalculable at this point. Having always politically closed ranks on any and all issues before, they now behave like a nest of vipers because its Simpson Miller.
All the PNP presidential contenders combined Drs. Omar Davies, Peter Phillips, and Karl Blythe as well as Bobby Pickersgill do not add up to her score in the recent Don Anderson poll.
The 'Drumblair Set', I'm told, is either going to go with Peter or Omar. Only one of them will seek the presidency in the end.
The irony is that being part of the 'Drumblair Set' means exposure to the arts. And the kind of art they were talking about wasn't Dashiki shirt or reggae music. It was classical music, sculpture, painting and primitives, now called intuitives.
The idea, therefore, that a new so-called Drumblair set could be promoting those two candidates is laughable. Drumblair people don't sweat either figuratively or literally. But that's all either candidate seems able to do.
Why couldn't now retired
talk-show host Beverley Manley work up any indignation? Instead she's riding the fact that the NSWMA's accounts are
two years late, morning after morning.
Yet all she has ever managed to do was rehabilitate Davies on air, time and time again, no matter how many billions he has
wasted. All of a sudden, Mrs. Manley is filled with self-righteous indignation over accounts being late.
I'm also disappointed in Pearnel Charles who said that Mrs. Simpson Miller's action was "inadequate in the extreme". He said the Prime Minister should intervene and the chairman and board members dismissed.
Mrs. Simpson Miller has asked them for a written report, and that is even though she came to local government and found them all in place at the NSWMA, and even though some are activists working on behalf of the candidacy of her opponent, Dr. Davies.
The people in NSWMA are entitled to defend themselves against all allegations first to the minister responsible, and she is required to study their report before taking action. I'm surprised that the trade unionist Charles could deny to them what is every working person's right, regardless of how execrable. I would have thought this would go against his very instinct.
OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK GOOD
Her opponents in the PNP and the JLP have, therefore, handed Mrs. Simpson Miller another opportunity to look good, just like the fire engine resolution in the House against which she refused to vote.
None of the alleged beneficiaries of
corruption in the NSWMA are her people, and they're all politically opposed to her. The 'senior PNP insiders' believe they have acted pre-emptively to try to make it hard for her to fire the guilty parties, as well as to embarrass her.
The PNP strategists who are laying traps for her do not realise she's smarter than her candidatorial opponents.
Anybody can see through it. It is a bare-faced attempt to take the heat off Davies and his blundering waste, and mounting public debt. They don't want that on the front page because he's their candidate. They also don't want the phenomenal murder rate this year twice as high as last on the front page either, because Peter Phillips is their spare.
Everywhere she goes Mrs. Simpson Miller digs up the place. She did that in tourism, labour, and I doubt this ministry will be any different.
I'm particularly interested in the five or six luxury SUVs that were bought at NSWMA without ministry approval. It's not them moving the garbage and most of us bring it to the bottom of the road anyway.
They don't have to come to collect it in a luxury SUV. Riverton City dump smells both literally and figuratively, and garbage collection is in an abysmal mess everywhere. And that's even accounting for how messy some of us can be.
In her own good time and within the confines of proper procedure and law, Mrs. Simpson Miller will do what she thinks necessary. The carpers will be few and self-interested as usual. But they'll get media attention as they always do. And again their bloody-mindedness will backfire on them.
Instead of playing dirty politics, her political opponents should just demand a public debate with her. Then she can put them out of their misery, and the public can have an end of it. The sooner the better for the PNP in fact, not only for the country.
