Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Interview with Beverly Anderson-Manley. - RUDOLPH BROWN PHOTOS/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
WHEN FORMER First lady, Beverly Anderson-Manley decided to end her longstanding relationship with the popular morning radio talk show, Breakfast Club in March this year she had big plans to stay away from political activism, finish writing her memoirs and live her passion.
Away from the trappings of political life savoured in the confines of her artsy townhouse in Mona Greathouse, St. Andrew. She would wake up every morning and write down memories of her life as they came home to her. Her truth, the soliloquy she has purposed to unveil to the world in a year.
Little did she know that the passion she had so much yearned to live and the politics she so desperately tried to avoid would be found wrapped up in the big ideas of Finance Minister Omar Davies. The least favoured, (according to the polls) of the three main contenders in the leadership race of the People's National Party (PNP).
THROES OF OMAR
In recent months she has found herself in the throes of Omar's 'big world class' campaign on transformational politics, ideas she also shares. And now, like a self-taught apostle, she has been spreading the 'gospel' according to Omar with zeal and praying that the rest of Jamaica will catch the vision: 'Omar for PNP president and Omar for Prime Minister.'
"When a critical mass of us catch that vision we realise that we are already world-class in different areas. Let me tell you, we live in a complex global environment. I can remember up to the 70s and I have heard Omar Davies said this; up to the 70s Michael Manley could attract a group of leaders around him and even talk to them and they would even listen to him. Right now, nobody cares.
STEP UP TO THE COMPETITION
We are on our own in this struggle to survive within this global environment, so we are going to have to wake up and realise that we are going to have to become competitive, we are going to have to step up so high in order to be world class and I know we don't have a choice and maybe this is one of the reasons I have stepped up," she says.
It was almost like she had an epiphany on world class leadership and after that "I went to Omar," she says. "Omar did not come looking for me."
"I am now so clear about my vision and where I want to go for the rest of my life that all the mechanism that can be available to me to be used in the quest for that vision of transformation (I want to use them). Lobbying for Omar Davies to become president of the People's National Party and Prime Minister of Jamaica once there is a vacancy is one such mechanism," she explains on a hot Thursday morning last week. "If I were to sum up Omar's vision (it) is 'Jamaica is world class in 10 years.' That's a BIG idea! and I love big ideas, world class really gets me."
A big idea that hit her hard and took her by suprise. But this 63-year-old woman who was once married to and entangled in the charismatic leadership style of former Prime Minister the late Michael Manley said she did her homework this time. It was not an emotional wooing of ideas or a simple following of a man she adored. This time she is older and wiser and has done an objective comparison of the ideal that she holds for Jamaican politics and she has found her ideological equal in the vision of Omar Davies.
"I have chosen to support Omar for a number of reasons. I am basing my decision on objectivity, not on emotion. I think it is such a critical decision that it is important that I don't allow my emotions to get in the way. I have been doing a lot of research, I have been doing a lot of speeches on what I call transformational leadership and I have a very clear idea in my own mind as to what are some of the criteria for that.
"If anybody told me that I would be involved at this level I would have said there is no way. My original intention was to stay apart from it ( politics) but world class pulled me. It was like a force that pulled me in," she says.
"I am a very spiritual person and I want to live my passion. I think that my passion is to serve people wherever they are to create an evironment within which individual groups or organisations can transform themselves and I saw this (lobbying for Omar) as a mechanism through which I can do this work," she says. And these are the things she knows.
Omar can articulate, he has a clear vision of where he wants to go, he is very open to women's issues and he is a financial wizard.
"I feel that his management of the economy, he is the finest Minister of Finance ever," says Ms. Manley. "Given what he got to work with, he has managed it very well and the international agencies agree with this. Even yesterday (Wednesday) Morgan Stanley (A US-based investment bank) came out in support of this. I have a huge idea for the transformation of Jamaicans wherever they are in the world and my vision aligns with his vision of world class."
World class is inspiring and she hasn't heard his contenders say anything yet to evoke life changing action.
"It doesn't mean that the other two are not great. For me where I have reached right now in my own life. The kind of things at 63 years old that I want to do with the rest of my life. What I want to align with, in terms of my own life my own goals and my vision fits very well into the ones that he has articulated."
Mrs. Manley says there are no political ambitions behind her support for Omar as she has no interest in representational politics.
"I think I have a very clear idea how to articulate the issues. I am a communicator. I have had long years of work in the political process. I am a writer and I am a speaker. I think I bring quite a few gifts to the table and I enjoy on the whole, grassroots work. I really just enjoy sitting down with Jamaican people and just reasoning with them.
" I am not going out there to say 'support Omar' what I am going to say is 'look, this is what the Omar Davies campaign for prosperity team is saying, this is what we are articulating. We want you to have the facts so that when you put it together with the other facts that you have you can decide for yourself who you should support."
