Bruce Golding, centre, receives a warm welcome from party supporters as his return to the Jamaica Labour Party is made official. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer

Mr. Seaga had offered Mr. Golding a seat as an independent senator to help the Jamaica Labour Party win the coming elections. Mr. Golding was favourable to such an appointment on the grounds that he could then make a contribution to political life with freedom to act according to his own conscience. At the same time, Mr. Golding confirmed that he had no plans to return to the JLP. That was just last week. A week in politics, you might say, is a long time. The situation has changed dramatically since.

Mr. Seaga and Mr. Golding have now worked out a formula for Mr. Golding to return to the JLP. It seems to be a formula of convenience. It exposes the fact that Mr. Seaga and the JLP have now accepted that they could not win the elections on the basis of Mr. Seaga's leadership alone. This begs the question, why then should Mr. Seaga continue as leader of a party that he cannot lead to victory? Does this confirm the Western Eleven's thesis, that the JLP cannot win another election under Mr. Seaga's leadership (alone)?

For Mr. Golding's part, it satisfies what we can now say with certainty, has been his long-standing desire to return to the JLP. Mr. Golding has not returned because he necessarily believes that this will help the JLP to win. He has returned because, win or lose, he will be positioned to be a part of the future leadership of the party and might even harbour secret hopes that the JLP loses, Mr. Seaga goes, and the way becomes clearer for him more quickly. But Mr. Golding had to return to the JLP before the elections to have credibility as someone who was there in the heat of the electoral battle rather than the opportunist who waited in the wings for the JLP to lose and then make his return. The JLP and independent senators' personal agendas aside, the politics of the formula also holds much difficulty and provides grounds for suspicion. The idea of Mr. Golding being an independent senator for the JLP was strange to begin with. In the first place, Mr. Seaga had refused to name independent senators after the 1997 elections when Mr. Patterson appointed Trevor Munroe and Douglas Orane. I suspect that this was to ensure that he had eight JLP senators who could deny the PNP a negotiable two-thirds in the senate should it try to pass important aspects of planned constitutional changes. In the end, Mr. Seaga did an about-turn and promised to name Mr. Golding whose constitutional model is fundamentally different from Mr. Seaga's anyway. Apparently, Mr. Seaga has decided to concentrate on winning first and worry about governing after.

In the second place, Mr. Golding agreed to the JLP's offer without discussing the matter with his former party, the NDM. Mr. Golding could not have been an independent senator and be a member of the NDM at the same time because he was not independent to begin with. He would have had to resign from the NDM. But if he did so, he would have had no political base except to join the JLP.

This to me was the logic of the situation and Mr. Golding has apparently seen this and decided to skip stage one (becoming an independent senator) and moving straight to stage two, joining the JLP.

CREDIBILITY PROBLEMS

Having now rejoined the JLP, Mr. Golding has added to major credibility problems which he will face for the rest of his political career. He had already angered many of the new democrats in the NDM by his past entreaties to the JLP despite the incompatibilities between the two parties. He had repeatedly said he would not rejoin the JLP on the grounds that nothing had changed about that party. He has said that Mr. Seaga was not fit to be prime minister because of his financial problems. He would have to face the fact that the offer of appointment is less about principles and more about political expediency, calculated to help the JLP win the elections. And, he would have to live with the view that he sees this as his only lifeline to get back into the mainstream of politics, anyway he could, and to have any chance of being a prime minister of Jamaica.

Mr. Golding will also have to face the fact that he has lied repeatedly to the country and the NDM about his real intentions regarding the JLP and this will haunt his reputation. Trust is one of the qualities in a leader that people most desire and Mr. Golding has started this second life in the JLP without it.

PARTY PROBLEMS

Now that Mr. Golding has broken with the NDM he will have to make common cause with the reformists in the JLP. This is the only way his return can make any sense. This means getting the backing of G2K, the group of young professionals allied to the party, which he already seems to have, along with what is left of the Gang of Five, Western Eleven and the Committee to Re-Build the JLP - the various dissident groups of the 1990s. Thus by inviting Golding's return, Mr. Seaga has actually rekindled the very forces that have been calling for his removal. This is the kind of dilemma that this desperate situation holds.

Another dilemma is that Mr. Golding's return to the JLP will strengthen the hand of Pearnel Charles, one of the party reformers with whom Golding has made amends. But these two men have very different styles and visions about how the JLP should reform. Mr. Golding has never been a part of the labour wing of the party. Mr. Seaga has not been either and does not want any development that would strengthen Charles's hand. But this is one of the contradictions of this very contorted scheme.

The old guards in the JLP will not stand idly by and watch Mr. Golding steal their thunder, as the great moderniser and reformer, and rob them of their opportunity to take over from Mr. Seaga which, they would argue, they deserve by their loyalty to the party. It is one thing to say they would welcome Mr. Golding back, but it is another to say, in what capacity. Even among the reformers, there will be different tendencies. Pearnel Charles wants a more grassroots JLP and Mr. Golding wants an American-type constitution. Mr. Golding's ideas of constitutional reform have little official support among the various tendencies within the JLP anyway.

The Golding/Seaga Memorandum of Understanding is just that, an understanding. It is not a pledge by the JLP to accommodate Mr. Golding's agenda. Besides, many of its points have already been taken up by the PNP. Mr. Golding's reforms have been watered down to make an accommodation with the JLP possible. But even worse, Mr. Golding is asking for changes in governance that are already on the way and the PNP will be able to argue that it makes no sense to change from the PNP to the Golding-JLP for a programme that the PNP has been pursuing.

MR. GOLDING'S FUTURE

Mr. Golding has made some critical mistakes in politics, allowing himself to be regarded as a crony of Mr. Seaga's for too long, standing by Mr. Seaga's preference for a Westminster model and being late in coming up with his own ideas for reform and renewal of the JLP. Then he left the JLP when he should have stood up and fought for the reforms he wanted. Worse, he kept sending signals to have a relationship with the JLP after he formed the NDM, alienating the new democrats. Finally, he abandoned the NDM when the party needed his leadership most and denied NDM supporters the third party alternative he had promised. The big question of course is whether Mr. Golding's return will win the elections for the JLP. I believe it will be too little, too late. The Bruce Golding that people wanted in the JLP was a Golding that had credibility. But by the way he has returned and the fact that he has returned when he said he would not, Mr. Golding has lost that credibility. He has traded in his best card.

Now he faces another decision. Mr. Golding's future is not a matter of his ability. It is about his clarity of thought.

Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm