Dawn Ritch, Contributor

Mayor of Kingston, Desmond McKenzie, likes to make a public song and dance about funding and trans-parency. None of it, of course, applies to the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC).

There the Auditor General has had some long-standing questions which, it seems, either cannot or will not be answered. Indeed, the Auditor General has been called into four different parish councils to investigate questionable expen-diture. With the exception of Portmore and, lately Portland, all are controlled by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

Where's the money?

Recently, the Mayor of Kingston, who heads the council responsible for cleaning drains, was in the news asking where was the money for drainage clearances. This, in the aftermath of heavy flooding on Marcus Garvey Drive after only two hours of rain. It was as though the KSAC bore no responsibility whatsoever for drain cleaning in any part of the city and, if so, was doing a brilliant job.

More recently, he participated in a television discussion programme and said that the Corporate Area's drainage system was very old. I don't see how this can be an excuse for keeping them blocked.

Now, he wants to know where is the money announced for the restoration of Kingston before Cricket World Cup 2007.

Wherever it is, I hope none of it gets to the KSAC. They have a hole in the bottom of their bucket that they were busy pretending didn't exist at all. Setting up a monitoring committee is no solution, but merely gives public legitimacy to the pretence.

The JLP under Bruce Golding says that it's new and different. But the operations of their parish councils suggest that they have merely taken a page out of the ruling party's book.

Indeed, Opposition Leader Bruce Golding is more a student of P.J. Patterson than Edward Seaga. Golding is showing every bit as much fondness for reports and committees as Patterson ever did.

From past experience, we know that these are the cloaks of night spread over traps so we'll step right into them. Committees are delaying tactics designed at best to confuse the public, or at worst to fool them up completely. If something has gone to a committee, no one need ever worry about it again because it will be ignored there as well.

The irony, there-fore, is that the JLP has found itself transformed into having the worst aspects of the former Patterson administration.

Golding says one thing, and means another. That was a hallmark of Patterson. He also was forever justifying himself unsatisfactorily Now Golding is doing the same thing. This is a common tactic among people who have no reference point, and are afraid to be found out. Nobody listens carefully to people like that. It's too confusing, and in my opinion is meant to confuse.

Lure of camera

McKenzie confuses himself because he can't resist the lure of a television camera. He just makes it up as he goes along, in the blind hope that he'll look authoritative. But it's hard to look authoritative when dressed by his tailor.

Somebody who heads an organisation being investigated by the Auditor General ought really to resign. In the absence of that, he should have the grace to sort out his own council before he goes pursuing others for allegedly owing the parish council money. In any event, paying up might just throw good money after bad. It's one thing to be starved of cash, and entirely another not to know where it's gone.

I am not sure how the Opposition Leader is going to make a good fist of the next general election. He will be dragging around the JLP parish councils by the feet behind him like a dead dog. Performance from them is thin on the ground, and there is even concern about unauthorised overdrafts in at least one instance. They are proving themselves little different to the catalogue of scandals with which they beat the PNP.

The JLP has found itself publicly condemning even the benefits given to their constituents. I was astonished to read of the JLP complaining bitterly that the advocacy of PNP caretakers was the catalyst through which street lights were installed in constituencies across the island.

The JLP accused Prime Minister Simpson Miller of playing 'dirty politics', and said that she was in effect the cause of their public humiliation.

In the first place, there can be no political mileage to be had from grumbling when people get street lights.

In the second, there can be no glory in pointing out that one's political opponents are more effective, for whatever reasons, at serving the needs of the people. This is both craven and foolish in one breath.

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that under Golding's leadership, the JLP has remained static in the polls commissioned by this newspaper. As a political party it is neither coming nor going. It doesn't seem to realise that it has lost the will to live.

Even though the PNP dropped six points, that party is still 12 points ahead of the JLP. Such a gap is closed only in dreams, or by new leadership.

No room for third party

When Simpson Miller won the internal contest in the PNP, her already-high ratings soared like a rocket. Since then, they have been in stately decline.

So anybody who thinks that new leadership makes no difference had better look again. Of course, people have to believe in that politician's fixity of purpose, and, on that score, Golding went skating on his belly long ago.

Political parties would sooner see their members go to the rival political party, than go independent or form a third party. Poor Robert Lightbourne was never taken seriously again once he left the JLP, and formed a now dead third party.

Jamaica has never had room for them, except as a form of public spectacle.

Golding made a spectacle of himself when he formed the National Democratic Movement (NDM) and left it high and dry.

His memorandum of under-standing with the JLP, and its so-called basis for his re-entry, were no more than a fig leaf to cover his nakedness.

Taking a raft of NDM members and associates into the JLP with him, and giving them seats over party stalwarts have not endeared the Opposition Leader to the JLP grass roots. The currency of a party is, and has always been, loyalty. This is a currency which Golding has much tarnished and devalued. Without it, there is no party machinery.

Simpson Miller's campaign for the presidency of the PNP demonstrates that there is more to politics than money. The least well-funded campaign of all was the one which triumphed by however close a margin.

We must, therefore, wait to see what kind of people will represent the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the next general election. If she can find a few like herself, she'll have it in the bag.