Getting to the Roots - Golding: The darling of the media
By Marjorie A. Stair, Bureau Chief

Golding

BRUCE Golding, having returned to the JLP, has become the darling of the media and is currently playing a starring role in both JLP and PNP advertisements.

No other politician, except for the two party leaders, has been able to obtain the kind of media exposure that he has. Most of the key players in the Jamaican media are relatively young and are also from a generation that, from all indications, place a lot of value on materialism and is, therefore, more likely to be guided by situational ethics than some of the age old and timeless principles that were valued in less materialistic times.

Those of us who are older, however, are fascinated by the fact that politicians like our star, Bruce Golding and people like D. K. Duncan and Trevor Munroe have been able, somehow, to bury some of the negative aspects of their past political life to the extent that one could almost assume that they have become the new conscience of the nation as their opinions are assiduously sought.Edward Seaga has not been so lucky. A fact, which I find quite intriguing.

The current advertising campaign of the political parties contesting the elections next Wednesday, October 16, is stirring up some ashes that were thought to be dead and cold, however and this leads me back to Bruce Golding. I have two friends who live in communities adjacent to Spanish Town who were not impressed by the Damascus road type conversion of Bruce Golding shortly after he left the JLP. Why? Let Bruce tell us:

"They (gunmen) were in your constituency and they were performing a function in the sense that they were keeping the PNP out of that area and therefore ensuring that you got all the votes" As far as my friends were concerned, when Bruce rode into their constituency, democracy rode out. For the first time in their adult life they were unable to vote for the party of their choice as the gunmen were not only keeping the PNP out of the area, they were destroying our democracy and preventing people like my two friends (I do not know which party they support) from exercising their right to elect the representative of their choice.

In one case when one of my friends got to the polling station, he was advised by one of these thugs that he should go home as 'they' had already voted for him - 'ensured that no ballot papers were wasted'.

Little changed with the departure of Bruce Golding. Indeed, things apparently got worse if we are to go by reports.

I mention this because I am concerned by both the tone and the attitude of Bruce Golding in the statement made on September 2, 1999. Although he had experienced conversion, (and I could be unfair), one gets little sense of remorse. He could have been speaking of the weather. He says that being associated with gunmen is not a criminal offence. This of course depends on the nature of the association. When he says that they were keeping PNP out of the area and therefore ensuring that you got all the votes, this does not mean they were standing guard at the polling station preventing PNP voters from entering the polling station. He is speaking of people being intimidated, forced out of their homes, and even killed. He is speaking of the destruction of the very core of our democracy. When he speaks of no ballot papers being wasted, he is speaking of bogus voting and stuffing of ballot boxes by people voting more than once.

I mention Bruce Golding because he is the only politician, as far as I can recall, that has come out openly and admitted to association with gunmen and the role they have played in our corrupt and bloody political system. Others know as much as he does but, holding us in contempt, they would like us to believe that gunmen exist only in the opposing party and their party is squeaky clean.

The fact is that the first set of politicians who, in the mid-1960s, or thereabouts, decided to give our children guns and ammunition, despair and hopelessness and a short life, instead of books, education, love, hope, a bright, safe and prosperous future, and long life, have left a bitter legacy which is being played out on the streets all over Jamaica today. It is a legacy that has driven away some of our brightest and minds. It is a legacy that has stifled and/or thwarted all meaningful effort aimed at sustained and real growth and economic development. It continues to drive away the investment, domestic and foreign that we need to build our country and has left too many of our citizens to not only live in squalor and deprivation but have allowed them to become slaves to the gunmen who, are no longer financed primarily by the political parties, but have carved out entire sections of our country for the purpose of trading narcotic drugs and running the extortion racket. What a legacy! Most of these politicians are still alive, many still active in politics. Younger ones have joined but little has changed, instead it has got worse.

If the Director of Elections, Glanville Walker, succeeds in limiting the criminal activities of our political parties, as he seems determined to, then he is my Man of the Year, and the EAC, especially the Independent members should be rewarded with some Honour Award. The EAC is now answering some of the questions I have asked over the years and I know that people like Professor Gladstone Mills, former Chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee was frustrated by the fact that the Advisory Committee was unable to declare some seats null and void when it was clear for all of us to see that the elections in those constituencies were neither free and fair or free from fear. The EAC is planning to stop these elections even before the corruption start. What a different country we could have had if we had been able to do then what the EAC is apparently willing and able to do now.

Two questions have continued to plague me ever since I started taking an interest in politics, having voted for the first time in 1972. If your intention is to represent the people in your constituency, why should you go to such lengths, even that of killing or having your fellow citizens killed, to perform that function? What have you won if you take your seat in Parliament, knowing that you got there, not by the citizens in your constituency electing you in a free and fair election and an election free from fair, but you are there because of corruption, bogus voting and death? Indeed, not only have you lost your own integrity and soul, but also you have lost for the rest of us, a very basic right that many of our forefathers fought and lost their lives so that we could have.

Have you ever wondered why our politicians do not encourage people to register to vote as in some other countries? We know they solicit financial resources from big business but have you ever wondered why they target the very poor and pay little or no attention to the middle class? They do not think they need our votes to win. They are used to buying or bogus! This is the simple answer. Make sure you go out and vote on Election Day and vote for the return of true democracy to our country by refusing to vote for any politician that is willing to swim in the blood of our brothers and sisters to take their set in Parliament.