Heather Robinson

HUMAN BEINGS, it is said, have selective memories. We choose to remember some things and pretend that we have no knowledge of other matters. Some of us remember the 1959 elections and some of us have many memories of the 1980 elections. Why is this so, you might ask. The answer is simple. I was four years old in 1959, and 26 in 1980. But there is an entire generation who will vote for the first time on August 27, who can only be told about the 1980 elections, which is the last time the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won a general election which the People's National Party (PNP) contested.

But today I am not going to write about those bitter elections, and the role played by the present leader of the JLP in those elections. Neither am I going to write today about what happened after the JLP victory to the owners of the newly built homes in Tawes Pen, Spanish Town. And today is not the day to begin to ask Bruce Golding where was he when these persons were being thrown from their homes by JLP supporters.

A long journey

Today, I want to remember another time in our recent past. While talking on Emancipation Day to a gentleman who hails from the parish of Hanover, but who has been living and working in Kingston for over 35 years, he began to recall what it used to be like to visit his mother in Hanover. He would leave Kingston at 5:00 a.m. to avoid the traffic. Getting to Hanover was not too difficult. It was the return journey on a Sunday evening that was always like a bad nightmare.

He remembers that the journey from Freetown to Spanish Town was like an obstacle course. Sensible motorists usually budgeted about two to three hours for this part of the drive. And if one was unfortunate enough to get to Hi-Pro during a shower of rain, then add another hour or two to the travelling time. On dry days one could find many cars that had overheated, and drivers had to rush to the irrigation canal for assistance. On wet days, one simply had to exercise great patience.

Having successfully put Old Harbour behind, one still had to look forward to the long lines of traffic on the Spanish Town bypass, and straight into Central Village. Today, my friend is living a new life, as he now has a new route to travel to and from Hanover. The route takes him via the Portmore toll road, the Dyke Road and onto Highway 2000, straight through to Sandy Bay. He believes that this is by far the most important progress that has been made - for him - by the government of the People's National Party.

Awful memory

There are some of us who remember that if one had to do any business in Portmore in the evening, one had to try and complete it before the road closed at 4.30 p.m., to facilitate the one-way traffic into Portmore from Kingston on the Causeway. Failure to do this meant having to drive via Mandela Highway, Washington Boulevard, Dunrobin Avenue, Constant Spring Road, Half-Way Tree Road into New Kingston. And some of us can remember when there was only two-way traffic going into and out of Portmore. What an awful memory!

Today, we have got so accustomed to the benefits and comforts that one derives from driving on new roads in Jamaica, that sometimes we forget where and how we used to drive before the Government took a conscious decision to improve our major roads to provide us with better driving comfort, as well as to open up our country for new developments.