GOLDING

Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

The year 1993 was a tough one for Bruce Golding. That year, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) suffered a heavy defeat to the People's National Party (PNP) in the general election. He was also involved in an incident that almost cost him his left eye.

Golding, who was 45 years old at the time, was accidentally shot by his hunting partner during a bird shoot. Surgery helped him retain some vision in the eye; he said the injury has not affected him.

"I function just like anyone, it hasn't stopped me from doing the things I enjoy," he told The Gleaner last week.

Not everyone has been sympathetic to Golding's plight. He said at times his opponents have been cruel.

"They say you can't follow behind a one-eye man, but that doesn't bother me," he said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also has an eye defect. He lost his left eye at age 16 as a result of a rugby game in his native Scotland.

He was eventually fitted with an artificial eye.

Other national leaders who served their countries effectively, despite physical impediments, were United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Trinidad and Tobago's first Prime Minister, Eric Williams.

Roosevelt was permanently paralysed from the waist down in 1921.

Not only did his New Deal policies help lift America out of the Great Depression, but he inspired a burst of nationalism throughout World War II.

Williams wore a hearing aid for years. Popular lore has it that he turned it off in Parliament when some of his opponents were speaking.

Other national leaders who served their countries effectively, despite physical impediments, were United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Trinidad and Tobago's first Prime Minister, Eric Williams.

This elderly women votes at the Buff Bay Primary School in the West Portland

constituency in the general election yesterday. - Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer