DAWN RITCHDAWN RITCH
BRUCE GOLDING has launched himself with a reported $3 million bash at the Jamaica Conference Centre. He hoped to impress the delegates of the Jamaica Labour Party and the wider community of the Jamaican electorate, one assumes. Central to the art of persuasion is the perceived sincerity of the person trying to make the case. In this regard Golding unsurprisingly comes up short.
His praise for the man he hopes to succeed, Edward Seaga, rang hollow. It would have been more believable had he said he came not to praise Seaga, but to bury him. After all Mr. Golding's supporters hounded and taunted the Opposition Leader into an unexpected retirement. This accomplishment, regardless of the means, has given Golding's supporters James Robertson, Daryl Vaz and Tom Tavares-Finson a great deal of public credibility, credibility in which the former hopes to participate. But so far he is seen only as the instigator, one who has never had the guts to either wait his turn or challenge Seaga himself.
GREAT PAINS
In Golding's speech he went to great pains to justify his treachery in demitting the office of chairman of the JLP in 1995, then setting up the National Democratic Movement (NDM) a rival political party within weeks of his departure. According to Golding, the Memorandum of Understanding that he signed upon his recent return is testimony to the fact that had there been this "openness" to his ideas in 1995 he would not have felt called upon to leave.
These ideas, promoted by the NDM, include constitutional reform and the separation of powers. That party has yet to win a single parliamentary seat, and has withered on the vine. These matters are neither attractive to, nor priorities for, the Jamaican people.
There is perhaps an apocryphal story of Golding campaigning among farmers in St. Elizabeth. As always the issue for these farmers is water and irrigation, because drought perennially threatens to dispose of their crops. When Golding visited some of them in this desperate state, he began to talk about constitutional reform and separation of powers, only to be cut off in mid-sentence about that being a "town argument". Was there, or was there not, something he could do about getting water to them? His answer has not survived. There is nothing to suggest that the same answer, clad in the green of the Labour Party instead of the blue of the NDM, would have fared any better.
The MOU exists as a fig leaf to Golding's return. Something to provide a shred of principle to what appears only a naked grab for power. The JLP had been leading in the opinion polls. He wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Seaga's desperation for electoral victory overcame him. Golding rejoined them three weeks before the 2002 General Election and the party lost the election.
There must be a lesson in here for somebody, if not for both. But no, instead Seaga had to be chased out rather than retire voluntarily. And Golding launches his bid for the leadership of that party with an unprecedented multi-million dollar glitz, and at the same location where he launched the doomed NDM.
BEMUSED
The farmer in St. Elizabeth is likely to be bemused at best, and indifferent at worst; like many other people, convinced that what is happening, or might happen, in the Labour Party has nothing to do with them. Nor might it necessarily bring any personal benefit unless you're in the public relations and event-planning business.
There is a great disconnect between the politics of the country and the minds of the people. Over the years party bases have shrunk, and the number of "Undecideds" have increased.
The two major political parties are organisations that have a tribal dance every year in the National Arena separately of course, although Golding apparently believes he can change this. He seems oblivious to the fact that a $3 million bash too neatly underscores the reality that today a Labourite or Comrade has to pay to get a dance on the conference floor.
This undercuts both the notions of celebration and democracy, because you have to pay to party. This used to be the one thing from which Jamaicans didn't have to be excluded on the basis of poverty. There was a time in this country when working-class Jamaicans all over saved their little pittance to come to their party's annual political conference. They rented their bus at a vastly discounted rate, paying only for the gas and came to Kingston to party, howling through every little village they passed on the way.
They still howl and ring bells. But now they expect to be put up at the Pegasus and the Hilton. There is thought of a political strategy to win a party election by blocking all the hotel rooms in Kingston. Even politicians who have no money dream about it. More cars, buses and highways than ever before, yet candidates want to exploit a political edge by having the delegates overnight. Better yet spend two nights in Kingston.
What is necessary for national relevance is to make people want to support political parties of their own volition. Make them want to save their own money, and stop exploiting the party and candidate coffers. This would greatly reduce the ginnalship on all sides.
Unfortunately the only tools a genuine politician has are his word and ideas. And nobody's word has ever counted for less than in the JLP and the PNP. Leaders keep resigning and returning. And the ones in the PNP keep leaving and not going. But nobody wants to stay. No wonder they have to keep paying everybody else to come.
NO SUBSTANCE
A baker recently told me that candidates like Bruce Golding and Dr. Peter Phillips are incomprehensible when they speak. It's just too many words. It's as though they're not interested in beating eggs, only egg whites, she said. What they say sounds very pretty and is stylishly presented, but it's all fluff and meringue. There's no pie there, no yolk, no substance. Only meringue politicians, and empty calories. I suppose this is what campaign communications director, Don Creary, was trying to convey in his glitzy launch of Golding last week. Billed as a 'Grammy-style' event, it had an eight-minute documentary on the failed NDM leader, and no head table. Where was the leadership to come from? The master of ceremonies? It illustrates the pervading fallacy in the JLP, that a party can be led by a group, and not one leader. The Reformists believe that they can go forward as a group with a leader who is a demonstrable hard sell. And the Traditionalists believe that as a group they can direct the fortunes of the party without one. Because they have two or three leaders in charge. No amount of public relations can help either case.
