Fuelling the class war

[Assasin]

Fuelling the class war
published: Tuesday | November 27, 2007


Vernon Daley
Portia Simpson Miller needs to meet with greater equanimity the cruel criticisms that naturally accompany the lives of public persons. It's hard to imagine that she has been in public life for some three decades without developing a more resistant armour to the slings and arrows of detractors.
I always thought that one of the traits of politicians was the ability to roll with the punches and give as good as they get. In this respect the Opposition Leader seems quite an untypical political figure.
Fuss over PM statement
Mrs. Simpson Miller has recently been making a fuss over statements made by [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]Prime [COLOR=orange! important]Minister[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] Bruce Golding at his party's annual conference two Sundays ago. The Prime Minister accused the People's National Party (PNP) of "intellectual depravity" and suggested that termites had "infested their brain".
The comments were unnecessarily stinging, to say the least, and we can only hope that Mr. Golding will resist the temptation to be similarly harsh in the future. He does have a greater responsibility, as Prime Minister, to keep public discourse at a minimum level of decency.
However, the real mischief in all of this was created by Mrs. Simpson Miller, herself. Following Mr. Golding's speech, the PNP president accused him of waging a class war on her party and sug-gested that she was the primary target of his verbal assault.
Gender bias
Mrs. Simpson Miller apparently believes that every criticism of her and the PNP under her [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]leadership[/COLOR][/COLOR] is born out of some class or gender bias. In reacting to Mr. Golding's comments, the Opposition Leader went into her background, talking about where she came from and who her parents were. My question is: who cares?
This tired attempt to play on the sympathies of poor Jamaicans is not only cheap but dangerous politics.
Jamaica doesn't need political leaders who are about fuelling class and other kinds of divisions to mask their own inadequacies. When one looks back over the four decades of this country's independence all one can see is the great opportunities missed because of the divisions fostered by political leaders. This new generation of Jamaicans, to which I proudly belong, is more than a bit fed up with the kind of talk which pushes people apart rather than brings them together.
We want a new kind of leadership that understands that for this country to move forward we can't have some people pulling one way and some people the other. Everybody has to be moving in the same direction. Is Mrs Simpson Miller capable of helping to chart that [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]course[/COLOR][/COLOR] and that vision or is she a relic of the country's divisive political past?
Hypocritical comments
I have to say, also, that I find some of the Opposition Leader's comments about election spending hypocritical. During the run-up to the last [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]general [COLOR=orange! important]elections[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR], she complained about what was felt to be [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]big [COLOR=orange! important]money[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] backing the Jamaica Labour Party and on several political platforms declared that she was not prepared to sell out the interest of Jamaica to a few powerful business people here.
She is obviously of the view that it was big money that cost her the elections and she uses each opportunity she gets to raise questions about the money the JLP got to run its campaign. Well, the entire Jamaica knows that some of those who were supporting the JLP in the last elections were on previous occasions fully in the corner of the PNP. I can't remember Mrs. Simpson Miller com-plaining about the money flowing to her party's coffers at that time.

[Willi]

People can chat bout class war when there are massive casualties of a real war??

1200+ murders n a tiny island is unfathomable for a peacetime situation.

[Assasin]

Portia and the politics of class
HEART TO HEARTBetty Ann Blaine
Tuesday, November 27, 2007


Dear Reader,
Just when everybody thought that the market-driven, capitalist economic machinery was in full gear and kicking, and that the ideological debate was dead and buried, the issue of social class has reappeared on the national agenda.
Ever since her ascendancy to the top political post in the country, the former prime minister and now leader of the opposition, Portia Simpson Miller, has been talking about her rise from humble beginnings. It sounded good at first. After all, who would not admire and be proud of someone who rose from the bowels of the poor to become the first woman prime minister of any country? Time and time again, the country would be reminded by Portia of her rise to fame from lowly beginnings, but little did many of us know that what Portia was uttering was more than words of self-commendation. It appears that what we have here is the re-emergence of the ideological debate on class, reminiscent of the period of the seventies.
The statement made by the opposition leader this past week in response to comments made by Prime Minister Bruce Golding at the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP's) annual conference makes it clear that she believes that class is at the root of the stalemate between herself and Bruce Golding. One has to ask the question, "Is Portia suffering from her own personal beliefs and complexes, or is there a rebirth of the socialist ideology of class being embraced and articulated by the PNP?"
There is no doubt that there is ample room for a serious debate on class and colour in Jamaica. Not only does the country continue to be stymied by the structural problems of inequality and differentiation, but the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing exponentially. The latest figures rate Jamaica as 11th on the scale of those countries with widening gaps between the rich and the poor. The problem we have here is that it will be extremely difficult for the PNP to advance any serious arguments about class conspiracy or class biases being perpetrated by their JLP opponents, given their own record of governance.
The fundamental difficulty is whether or not the PNP can prove that its close to 20 years of rule resulted in any substantial shift in class relations or class stratification. While official statistics showed a slight decrease in poverty levels, the position of the poor remained largely static under the former PNP administration. In fact, the serious problem of child poverty increased steadily under their watch.
Not even the declaration from former PNP Prime Minister PJ Patterson that his time was black man time resulted in any significant shift in the class structure. Under 'black man time', labour unions and the rights of the working class lost significant traction, and every indicator pointed to the abandonment of the class struggle in the aggressive pursuit of the free market, capitalist economic exigencies.
The successive scandals that have been rocking the PNP, including the persistent Trafigura and Cuban light bulb probes, serve to confirm the perception of the abandonment of the poor for the "big" and "special interest". Many people are of the opinion that 'black man time' was only for a handful of special 'black men' and some who are not so black - those who are members of the special PNP 'inner-party club'.
Of all the scandals, the Cuban light bulb saga is perhaps the most glaring in its contradictions. There is no way that any gift to the country for distribution to the poor should have cost us any more than a couple million dollars. For the PNP administration to have racked up a bill of close to $280 million is immoral at best. Was there anybody inside the PNP whose conscience did not allow him or her to ask the question, "How can these bulbs be distributed at the lowest cost possible to the country?"
Was there nobody in the PNP that argued that the hundreds of millions spent could be utilised for urgently needed poor relief? Was there nobody inside the PNP who had the moral suasion to juxtapose the hundreds of millions squandered on handing out and screwing in light bulbs to the plight of pensioners - many of whom are living below the poverty line - or the poor families living off less than $1,000 per week on the government's PATH programme? Was there anybody inside the PNP who thought about those children who have been relegated to child labour - those we see vending on the streets at all hours of the day and night? Was there anybody who gave any thought to the growing numbers of homeless and indigent all around us?
The problem with rhetoric, whether it's about the class struggle, or about belief in God, is that words must match the deeds. You can't proclaim to love the poor, but your actions demonstrate the opposite.
Portia has it all wrong. Yes, there are very clear divisions of class and colour in Jamaica, but one doesn't have to come from the bowels of the poor to understand and appreciate those dynamics. The PNP's own father of socialism, Michael Manley, is perhaps the best example of that. If the Opposition leader wants to wage a class war, then she had better be fully aware of contradictions within her own party.
With love,
bab2609@yahoo.com

[HL]

Portia Miller is just a dunce....

One problem with some Jamaicans is that they cannot identify good leadership...

[Mosiah]

...and Americans can. Hence George Bush. And I could continue.

[HL]

Ok cumbred Mosiah--dough baddah tek me on now.

[Willi]

JFJ Mo!!! Your org. is focussed on ending the killing, so I expect U to be more vocal.

Dem killing off Jakans like its going out of style and we here arguing foolishness but class and tarawattt!

Smith better step up his game soon!

Where is the McMillan crime plan!!

[Mosiah]

JFJ Mo!!! Your org. is focussed on ending the killing, so I expect U to be more vocal.

Are you serious?!? Willi, mi tink mi tiyad. All di Jermaine Hue campaign just wimper out so-suh-suh.

Mi a low di placard ting, my yute.

[Seuss]

You know what this reminds me of ... the scare tactics of the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld technique of raising the spectre of terror everytime any issue of substace looked like it might attract the attention of the people. This BS is is just that a distraction from our real problems. I am just not sure who is the instigator and who benefits.