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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>A gravestone for the PNP</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, October 12, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>"If I had known then what I know now, I would not have opened my mouth."<P class=StoryText align=justify>- AJ Nicholson, legal adviser to the PNP and attorney general as told to Emily Crooks, October 9, 2006.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Unravelling the hastily spun web of deceit was the easy part. Harder was the retreat into the closed-door silence than the failed attempt at convincing us that the new positions were not just another tangled web designed to save face and personnel, but potentially and unwittingly fashioned to dig a grave for the PNP.<P class=StoryText align=justify>More difficult was salvaging the reputation of a party founded on the first principles of honesty in leadership. At the launch of the PNP in 1938, Norman Manley said, "We don't want a foolish electorate at the mercy of every demagogue, and unable to unravel the tricks of undisciplined politicians who regard politics as a means of self-aggrandisement."
As Norman Manley spoke, Howard Cooke, Jamaica's elder statesman (up until recently Jamaica's governor-general), heard him. But on that September day in 1938, a much younger man and one of the proud founders of the PNP representing the Jamaica Union of Teachers, Howard Cooke heard the concluding words of that speech, "But if we start all right, if we never desert our own principles, if we appreciate those who regard the country as their home, those who believe that civilisation is possible for people of mixed origins, if we never allow people to deflect us from our goals."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, the PNP has come a long way from 1938 and, based on the Trafigura scandal, the passage and the goals of the party have become most distorted, confused and agonisingly troubling. Grown men have come before us in a panicked, despicable show of PNP unity around what has turned out to be a great lie in a national issue and, in the evolved tenets of "the new politics" which ran unfettered in the period during Patterson's run in 1992 to Portia Simpson Miller's ascendancy in 2006, the PNP now stands in a dark, slimy corner pleading with us to give it an ear.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Our first instinct is to dismiss it, shoo it away, but there is the perverse side of us saying, "Let's give it a listen, let us hear our fill of more tales, more obfuscation, more deceit, more national pain at viewing the mass disgrace of those whom we the people chose to represent us."
Having done so with the PNP repeatedly, we have collectively as a people empowered that party to take us to the zenith of our social and economic potential. Instead, it has dragged us down with it and now we stand as a fallen people; a grand laughing stock and a failed experiment by some in the global community.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Make no bones about it. The world community is following this one," said one foreign official to me (recently), and who requested anonymity. "We have enjoyed a healthy trading relationship with Jamaica over many years and as you know we have provided assistance in many areas. Obviously, we have concerns and have already convened a top-level meeting to formulate a position, although I rather doubt that we will be issuing any unsolicited or quoted stances on this matter."<P class=StoryText align=justify>The choice before us now is not so much the customary one between the PNP and the JLP as it is the pressing need to end the unfortunate life
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, October 12, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>"If I had known then what I know now, I would not have opened my mouth."<P class=StoryText align=justify>- AJ Nicholson, legal adviser to the PNP and attorney general as told to Emily Crooks, October 9, 2006.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Unravelling the hastily spun web of deceit was the easy part. Harder was the retreat into the closed-door silence than the failed attempt at convincing us that the new positions were not just another tangled web designed to save face and personnel, but potentially and unwittingly fashioned to dig a grave for the PNP.<P class=StoryText align=justify>More difficult was salvaging the reputation of a party founded on the first principles of honesty in leadership. At the launch of the PNP in 1938, Norman Manley said, "We don't want a foolish electorate at the mercy of every demagogue, and unable to unravel the tricks of undisciplined politicians who regard politics as a means of self-aggrandisement."As Norman Manley spoke, Howard Cooke, Jamaica's elder statesman (up until recently Jamaica's governor-general), heard him. But on that September day in 1938, a much younger man and one of the proud founders of the PNP representing the Jamaica Union of Teachers, Howard Cooke heard the concluding words of that speech, "But if we start all right, if we never desert our own principles, if we appreciate those who regard the country as their home, those who believe that civilisation is possible for people of mixed origins, if we never allow people to deflect us from our goals."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, the PNP has come a long way from 1938 and, based on the Trafigura scandal, the passage and the goals of the party have become most distorted, confused and agonisingly troubling. Grown men have come before us in a panicked, despicable show of PNP unity around what has turned out to be a great lie in a national issue and, in the evolved tenets of "the new politics" which ran unfettered in the period during Patterson's run in 1992 to Portia Simpson Miller's ascendancy in 2006, the PNP now stands in a dark, slimy corner pleading with us to give it an ear.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Our first instinct is to dismiss it, shoo it away, but there is the perverse side of us saying, "Let's give it a listen, let us hear our fill of more tales, more obfuscation, more deceit, more national pain at viewing the mass disgrace of those whom we the people chose to represent us."
Having done so with the PNP repeatedly, we have collectively as a people empowered that party to take us to the zenith of our social and economic potential. Instead, it has dragged us down with it and now we stand as a fallen people; a grand laughing stock and a failed experiment by some in the global community.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Make no bones about it. The world community is following this one," said one foreign official to me (recently), and who requested anonymity. "We have enjoyed a healthy trading relationship with Jamaica over many years and as you know we have provided assistance in many areas. Obviously, we have concerns and have already convened a top-level meeting to formulate a position, although I rather doubt that we will be issuing any unsolicited or quoted stances on this matter."<P class=StoryText align=justify>The choice before us now is not so much the customary one between the PNP and the JLP as it is the pressing need to end the unfortunate life