Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer
JLP leader Bruce Golding (left) with former party leader Edward Seaga in this July 2006 file photo.
ONE OF the burning questions during the recent election campaign was what type of relationship former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Edward Seaga and his successor, Bruce Golding, shared.
Last Saturday, in an interview with The Gleaner, Mr. Golding said he retained a "good relationship" with his former mentor who was conspicuously absent from the platform at JLP rallies.
"There are areas we disagree on, he is not enamoured with my reform agenda which resulted in my resignation from the party and he still holds his views," Mr. Golding said. "I respect his views but I think the time has come when we have to neutralise the politics of the country."
Mr. Seaga stepped down from the leadership of the JLP in January 2005. The former Prime Minister had been at the helm since 1974 but fell out of favour with the party's younger, reform-minded members.
Mr. Golding left the JLP in 1995, and helped form the National Democratic Movement (NDM). He returned to the JLP shortly before the October 2002 General Election and was elected its leader at its conference in February 2005.
Mr. Seaga, who is now a Distinguished Fellow at the University of the West Indies' Mona campus, has not commented publicly on the JLP's victory in the general election Monday.
Bruce Golding comments on ...
His father, former JLP Member of Parliament, Tacius Golding:"He always supported my being in politics, he was my mentor. I suspect that if he was alive today that this was what he expected (Golding becoming Prime Minister) from those early days."
On Nelson Mandela, his political hero:"We are a very polarised country, politically, and this has been the bane of some of the problems we have had. Nelson Mandela demonstrated in a country that was so fractured and polarised how you could build around a set of national objectives; I think he's a tremendous example to the world."
If he has underachieved:"It depends on how you measure achievement. You can measure achievement in terms of how many jobs you've been able to help create, or how many miles of roads you have been able to do. I think what I'll perhaps regard as one of my lasting contributions to this country is that I challenged the system in the mid-1990s and put my political future at risk. I think that helped change the agenda of public discussion."
