We sense from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and its councillors in the Portland Parish Council a feeling that they were hard done in last week's overturning of JLP leadership of the council and the installation of Benny White as chairman, replacing Rupert Kelly.
In our view, no one in the Portland soap opera has emerged with any great credit, except for the fact of their surreal stab at Machiavellian drama, which, in the end, turned into a comic farce.
Unfortunately, while the rest of us got the laughs, the business of the people of Jamaica's eastern-most parish was largely placed on hold. They could not have found that funny.
Mr. White, councillor for Portland's Fellowship division, started his political life as a member of the JLP, which he remained until just over two years ago. Then he had a falling out with his party.
He had sided with Dr. Dennis Minott, the then JLP caretaker for East Portland, who was subsequently expelled from the party following controversy over allegations of bribery in the constituency during the JLP's 2004 vice-presidential elections. With Mr. White out of the JLP and ostensibly an independent member of the parish council, he sided with PNP members to overturn the JLP one-seat majority in a move that would have made him chairman and thus, the mayor of Port Antonio.
A first, the JLP filibustered to delay the vote and won in court over whether the motion for a vote of no-confidence in the then mayor, Alston Hunter, was properly before the council. Then the JLP stumbled on an obscure rule in the Parish Council Law that if a chairman resigns and his deputy takes office, the new incumbent cannot be challenged for a year. That is what happened. Mr. Hunter resigned and Mr. Kelly became the chairman.
We do not like this rule and believe that it ought to be changed. We suspect that it was initially inserted as an attempt to secure stability in the parish councils. As Portland has demonstrated, it produced the opposite result. For more than two years, the Portland Parish Council has been bedevilled by ill-will, distrust and instability. It could not settle down for good or bad because one side felt the other was in place more by political trickery and gamesmanship than by right.
There are those who dislike political crossing of the floor, as Mr. White did, and advocate that representatives who do this should have to vacate their seats. The idea is that they often win their seats on party tickets rather than their own accord.
But as Karl Samuda, the JLP's general secretary has so ably shown, people can hop-scotch between political parties, all the time retaining the confidence of their constituents. Which is the point that Mr. White had made.
It is unfortunate this matter was not settled two years ago and that Portland had to remain in a drift. What is now important for the council is to get on with the people's business, with the new leadership, as Mr. Kelly says, being kept on their 'Ps and Qs' by the Opposition.
The people of the Fellowship division will soon be able to decide whether they like Benny White's choice of bedfellows.
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