Dawn RitchSOMEONE WHO launches her political campaign at Paul Bogle's statue in St. Thomas, then goes to the Kingston Parish Church, kneels to say a prayer and is blessed by the Anglican Bishop of Kingston, and in the last week of her campaign visits the memorial to Nanny in Moore Town, Portland, is signalling to the country to expect the extraordinary.
And so it has been. Portia Simpson Miller won against all odds. She won against the political status quo, the party machinery, the media and the intelligentsia. Above all, she has vanquished the latter and the country has breathed a mighty sigh of relief. Last week, one of the bauxite industry's longest-running labour disputes in history was brought to an end by her intervention. It had been going on for 21 months, and she solved it before even being sworn in.
SUPPORT FROM
WOMEN, WORKING CLASS
This newspaper keeps suggesting that her electoral victory was as a result of support from women and the working class. This is to assume that the country is consumed from one end to the other by feminist enthusiasm and a sense of solidarity among the poor. This flies in the face of reality.
All the PNP women and women's organisations lined up solidly behind Dr. Peter Phillips or Dr. Omar Davies, to say nothing of an endless string of female celebrities from that party, beginning with Maxine Henry-Wilson and Beverly Anderson Manley. There was no feminist enthusiasm for Portia whatsoever. Murder in Jamaica is largely poor on poor, and within the political parties. There is no solidarity among the working class, and a sense of charity is missing everywhere.
I doubt therefore that Mrs. Simpson Miller was elected out of anybody's pity, or sense of victimhood. Her victory is a plain and straight revolt against the rule and sway of the mindless intelligentsia in the country. Under the latter's stewardship of governance, the country has collapsed into murder, joblessness and corruption.
The delegates of the PNP, although richly bribed, did what they were told not to do. They stood as a bulwark against the prevailing culture of personal entitlement and national penury. Such an outcome cannot be reduced to meaningless labels like feminism, which has already been demonstrated to be non-existent, nor working class solidarity which is nowhere to be found in any aspect of national life.
Karl Marx, the inventor of democratic socialism and founder of communism, was himself always very well-fed. Every comrade since then has had his dacha, or villa or ranch and become a broad-acred gentleman overnight. Their so called 'concern' for the poor before, becomes instantly converted into personal luxury for themselves.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS
The left-leaning intelligentsia is attracted to that kind of outcome and eager to lend it its academic credentials. They are Ph.D.s for hire in the service of nothingness, save and except privilege for the few, and endless curry favouring with the members of the establishment. More than anything else, Portia's victory represents the demolition of that deleterious mind set.
It is difficult to see how it might ever emerge again. Once the public no longer has to listen to people they don't understand, and who by definition are irrelevant to the situation, they might never pick up the habit again. A lot of after-dinner speakers are going to go begging for audiences.
The current Prime Minister, P. J. Patterson, won't go because he believes Mrs. Simpson Miller, prime minister-designate, has to be taken by the hand and guided through the world. Not another Prime Minister or president anywhere else on the planet has done this. It looks most odd indeed. When a thing is over it's usually over, but not with P. J. Patterson, and not until the 30th of this month. I doubt he would have tried that with a man, any man.
In the meantime, according to another newspaper, Mrs. Simpson Miller also last week said in Alligator Pond, Manchester that "People are going to come offering support; don't turn them away. Embrace the people who are coming." As usual, her statements are short and clear as a bell, no pun intended.
Abe Dabdoub, JLP member of parliament for North East St. Catherine resigned with immediate effect from the Jamaica Labour Party after decades in that party. He said that he no longer knew what it stood for, that he was impressed with Portia's vision of unity for the country, (his close relatives already support her) and that the PNP had done one or two good things in housing and infrastructure. It's as though Mr. Dabdoub appeared on cue.
Politicians have been known to cross the floor before from either side, but not usually in droves, which is what is being contemplated according to the television news. It seems that the Endimites (those who came over with Bruce Golding from the NDM) are not sitting well with the Labourites. The former want to replace or remove the latter, whom they regard as people who run seats but don't win them, even it appears, when they've won them already and are the sitting M.P.'s.
A THREE-CARD TRICK
On the other hand, the NDM, founded by Bruce Golding in 1995, has not won a single parish council division much less a parliamentary seat in over a decade. The electorate does not find any of them attractive, nor has it been in the least bit excited by the promise of constitutional reform and separation of powers. The public can recognise a three-card trick when they see one. They sense that such a political platform is always the last refuge of a political despot.
Now it appears that the Endimites want to make it into the prevailing philosophy of the JLP. It didn't win them a seat, and it won't win one for the Labourites either.
The fact is that leadership, particularly political leadership, is about sheer force of personality. It is the will to get people to do as you ask without violent coercion. Mrs. Simpson Miller has only to crook her little finger. Bruce on the other hand has to go to this council and that, and then still ignore the findings. One is a leader, the other is not. This column congratulates her.
In the end, most us are followers. But Bruce will have to stay in the bed that he's made for himself.
