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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Trafigura dead? In your head, Minister Buchanan!</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, October 26, 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>"At the end of the day, having refuted and really destroyed all the arguments coming from the Opposition, the matter is now at an end," said minister of Information and Development Donald Buchanan recently, in his lame attempt to pronounce dead the Trafigura/PNP scandal.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Depending on the political tribe to which one belongs, Minister Buchanan is either the epitome of the PNP party man: in dress, a PNP fashion throwback to the turbulent 1970s or, in respect of the immorality of the Trafigura "donation", a man with firm views that the people of the country are idiots who must be held up and exposed for the unworthy people he and his colleagues believe we all are.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Unlike many other "verandah chat" nine-day-wonders of the past, the Trafigura matter has found lodging in the craw of the man and woman at street level. Too many times in the past, national matters that come upon us in the media radar are not held to the same degree of importance by "small people" as they are made out to be by the middle class and those in touch with most information channels.<P class=StoryText align=justify>This time around, the public found a reason to hang on to information on Trafigura and engage in conversation about it at urban street level and in many small-town settings in rural Jamaica. The reasons are varied but simple.<P class=StoryText align=justify>For as long as I can remember from the late post-independence years of the 1960s to the present, Jamaicans have always suspected that our politicians were, most of them, a bunch of liars who were always on the hunt for that little extra "under the table" embellishment.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Why, some reasoned, would highly trained professionals give up incomes of, say, $20 million per year, all for the purpose of getting the opportunity to "serve" in politics for $4 million or $6 million per year especially when, after the first five years there is not too much evidence of the "serve" part?<P class=StoryText align=justify>The last time the JLP had any chance of stealing from us was 17 years and eight months ago. In other words, in 1989 when J$100 could buy food and grocery items to provide a poor mother one week's supplies for herself and two children, the JLP lost power to the PNP. The PNP has been in power since February 1989.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, that same amount of food and grocery items for that poor mother will cost J$2,000.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In the Trafigura affair, a confluence of events has moved some in the electorate to believe that the PNP has still not come clean with the truth.<P class=StoryText align=justify>First was Bruce Golding's presentation during his revelation of the scandal. Unlike the prime minister, who has made herself out to be this conveniently clueless but always divinely innocent leader before and after Trafigura, the Leader of the Opposition came to the nation armed not just with facts but with documents to support them.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Even taking into consideration his initial overzealousness in calling on the government to resign, his presentation was soberly laid out and well-articulated, and based on the strength of it, the PNP and government were forced into huddled meetings behind closed doors, in an effort to forge an answer which would s
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, October 26, 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>"At the end of the day, having refuted and really destroyed all the arguments coming from the Opposition, the matter is now at an end," said minister of Information and Development Donald Buchanan recently, in his lame attempt to pronounce dead the Trafigura/PNP scandal.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Depending on the political tribe to which one belongs, Minister Buchanan is either the epitome of the PNP party man: in dress, a PNP fashion throwback to the turbulent 1970s or, in respect of the immorality of the Trafigura "donation", a man with firm views that the people of the country are idiots who must be held up and exposed for the unworthy people he and his colleagues believe we all are.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Unlike many other "verandah chat" nine-day-wonders of the past, the Trafigura matter has found lodging in the craw of the man and woman at street level. Too many times in the past, national matters that come upon us in the media radar are not held to the same degree of importance by "small people" as they are made out to be by the middle class and those in touch with most information channels.<P class=StoryText align=justify>This time around, the public found a reason to hang on to information on Trafigura and engage in conversation about it at urban street level and in many small-town settings in rural Jamaica. The reasons are varied but simple.<P class=StoryText align=justify>For as long as I can remember from the late post-independence years of the 1960s to the present, Jamaicans have always suspected that our politicians were, most of them, a bunch of liars who were always on the hunt for that little extra "under the table" embellishment.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Why, some reasoned, would highly trained professionals give up incomes of, say, $20 million per year, all for the purpose of getting the opportunity to "serve" in politics for $4 million or $6 million per year especially when, after the first five years there is not too much evidence of the "serve" part?<P class=StoryText align=justify>The last time the JLP had any chance of stealing from us was 17 years and eight months ago. In other words, in 1989 when J$100 could buy food and grocery items to provide a poor mother one week's supplies for herself and two children, the JLP lost power to the PNP. The PNP has been in power since February 1989.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, that same amount of food and grocery items for that poor mother will cost J$2,000.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In the Trafigura affair, a confluence of events has moved some in the electorate to believe that the PNP has still not come clean with the truth.<P class=StoryText align=justify>First was Bruce Golding's presentation during his revelation of the scandal. Unlike the prime minister, who has made herself out to be this conveniently clueless but always divinely innocent leader before and after Trafigura, the Leader of the Opposition came to the nation armed not just with facts but with documents to support them.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Even taking into consideration his initial overzealousness in calling on the government to resign, his presentation was soberly laid out and well-articulated, and based on the strength of it, the PNP and government were forced into huddled meetings behind closed doors, in an effort to forge an answer which would s
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