Dawn Ritch, Columnist

Iclaim no powers of clairvoyance. But last week I said that what Opposition Leader Bruce Golding does isn't silly, it's just plain stupid.

Not even I, who think so little of his abilities, however, could have wished to see him almost cry on camera last Sunday night.

Golding was live from Belmont Road, and speaking right after the massive PNP rally in Half-Way Tree. He had a golden opportunity. He had the chance to be a statesman before arguably the largest television and cable audience in the history of the country. Instead, he blew his top.

It is unimaginable that Golding could have thrown away such an opportunity, but he did. The Opposition Leader had been calling for and predicting general election dates for almost 16 months. Yet when the date was finally announced last Sunday, his first order of business was to complain bitterly that the country had been "shafted". He clearly can't think on his feet, and has to be scripted.

This was most intemperate language about what is supposed to be a long-awaited positive. On what grounds was the Opposition Leader so cross? Several it seems. Having heard the date, he shifted the goal post to fixed election dates, when nobody else ever knew that such a ball was in play. Not even the governing People's National Party was aware of that game. But bright and early Monday morning they said they'd gladly play it as part of overall constitutional reform.

I don't want a fixed election date. I enjoy the anticipation and ceremony. This is part of the Westminster model, which Jamaica has long practised. It concerns me greatly, therefore, that the two major political parties have set everything in train to turn us into a republic, without a referendum.

Determined to fiddle

Fixed election dates, presidents and republics are all part of the same thing. A slavery and oppression on the order of failed Latin American and African states, and the failing moral authority of the United States and its expensive lobbying groups. Furthermore, we are already who and what weare, so why are our political parties determined to fiddle with the Jamaican Constitution to create something else? How can this be a burning issue, much less a national priority? Nevertheless Bruce Golding says that he will enact a fixed election date in his first 100 days in office.

He complains that the seven weeks to the August 27 general election is too long to wait. Perhaps for someone who has been waiting for power for decades, but not if all things are equal. That's just next month, for heaven's sake. This is hardly grounds on which to get so very angry, and live on camera. Particularly about a promise that he can't deliver in 100 days, because it is legally unfeasible according to constitutional expert Dr. Lloyd Barnett Queen's Counsel, on 'The Breakfast Club'. Golding can't have thought this through. He does that a lot.

He promised free education the very day after the general election if he wins. This immediately threw the school sector and its finances into abject confusion. He says how he'll fund it is still a "dilemma". Following that, his shadow spokesman Andrew Holness said it wouldn't be free after all. It would be a refund instead, and they'll work it out. So parents are to pay in advance.

Golding also said political tensions will increase before an election. But seven weeks can hardly be described as a protracted length of time. Matters were certainly not helped that convoys of vehicles transporting PNP supporters back home from the rally were being stoned and shot at, while Golding was saying this, in Middle Quarters, Clarendon, Stony Hill, the Junction Road and the Bog Walk gorge. The news on RJR last Monday morning was most alarming.

Golding also whined on camera about having to "elasticise" his campaign. This apparently was an eventuality that he and his party hadn't banked on, nor even considered, it seems. Even if he were indeed cut to the quick, it is amateurish to face the cameras with sourness written all over his face.

If he can get so vexed without power, how angry might heget once he has it? Not only would Comrades have to run for cover, but the rest of us too. That live press conference demonstrates yet again that Golding is temperamentally unsuited to the exercise of power. Better he had taken to his bed.

It takes no clairvoyance, prophecy or numerology, not even tarot cards and wedding rings suspended over open Bibles, to predict that Golding can be relied upon never to rise to any occasion. He brings a churlishness to everything. There is no point whimpering that the date should have been in July, because she's already set it for August 27. Besides, she gets to name the date within the constitutional time frame allowed. That's her prerogative, not his.

A flip-flop at best

Golding has gone from shouting "We ready, we ready any time!" in every nook and cranny, to snarling about having to go back to the drawing board and "elasticise". It was an overnight change. That's a flip-flop at best. At worst, it's called falling on your face in full public view.

Golding suffers from that common cravenness which affects people who have been out of power too long. Politicians in that position are at risk of running down everything about the country they hope to represent, and guilty of speaking in tones too pregnant with a sense of entitlement. If everything is always wrong, then there's no room for hope. And if an Opposition Leader too obviously feels himself entitled to the post of Prime Minister, then it becomes public sport to deny it to him.

All of this will seem like a foreign language to Bruce Golding. Since the age of 13 he wanted to be Prime Minister. His hopes were intensified when former JLP leader Edward Seaga made him heir apparent. But Seaga had two: one for the outside world and one for the back room. Pearnel Charles was on the outside, and Golding was in the back room.

The rivalry between them was at the root of the JLP's Gang of Five scandal. I will always remember the day when Pearnel Charles looked around at Douglas Vaz, Ed Bartlett, Errol Anderson, andKarl Samuda at the latter's home and wondered aloud, "What am I doing here with you guys?" Poor Pearnel had been ostracised by the party and got caught up in a so-called scandal about which he knew nothing. Of course, his remark only further served to infuriate his alleged co-conspirators. Pearnel had to go to court to get back into the party. His brother-in-law Golding, JLP chairman at the time, had presided over his demise. History records that they succeeded in expelling Karl Samuda who, were it not for his expulsion and subsequent performance in the PNP, may well have been leader today.

Mrs. Simpson Miller, president of the PNP, is unlikely to be swept away by events about which she knows nothing. Her own party has tried to manage her without success for 18 years. It is unlikely that even a gifted outsider could succeed where they have failed.