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The moral authority measuring stick
TAMARA SCOTT-WILLIAMS
Sunday, May 16, 2010
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ESSENTIALLY what they're saying to each other, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to the People's National Party (PNP), and vice versa is: "My moral authority is bigger than your moral authority". It's all one big ****************ing match, if you ask me, and while the Government of Jamaica and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition put their deeds and misdeeds to the ruler, the citizens of Jamaica are being caught up in the stream.
Organised political and social groups may be blowing hot and heavy, calling for the immediate resignation of the prime minister -- for, in effect, deceiving the nation about who had engaged the services of the American law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in the matter of the extradition request for Christopher Coke -- but it is in fact the prime minister's Cabinet, those ministers who decided that he should be the prime minister, who must now decide whether they are confident that Bruce Golding is still fit to be their leader.
GOLDING… if he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering his seemingly bipolar antics and differentiating when he’s speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he’s speaking as leader of the JLP
[Hide Description] GOLDING… if he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering his seemingly bipolar antics and differentiating when he’s speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he’s speaking as leader of the JLP
[Restore Description]
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Whatever the nine-day outcome, what is for sure is that life as we know it will never be the same, and in fact may become worse. If he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering the seemingly bipolar antics of the prime minister and differentiating when he's speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he's speaking as leader of the JLP.
Whatever the case, it is certain that trust has gone out of the window. Mr Golding has seen it fit to mislead the country in a bid to strengthen his administration's refusal to extradite an alleged drug dealer and gun-runner, while the murder rate climbs daily and the heinousness and randomness of the crimes committed against the people of Jamaica increase without his direct intervention.
And so, while we appreciate the sentiment of Peter Bunting, general secretary of the PNP, that in order for Jamaicans to free the country from the criminality we must put our lives on the line, we feel he could not have chosen a more unfortunate reference than to cite Jamaican poet Claude McKay's sonnet If We Must Die.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honour us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
About the poem, which "exploded out of him" during the days of the lynchings and Harlem riots of 1919, Claude McKay wrote: "Our Negro newspapers were morbid, full of details of clashes between coloured and white, murderous shootings and hangings. Travelling from city to city and unable to gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous. We were less light-hearted.
"We did not separate from one another gaily to spend ourselves in speakeasies and gambling joints. We stuck together, some of us armed, going from the railroad station to our quarters. We stayed in our quarters all through the dreary ominous nights, for we never knew what was going to happen."
After reading the poem, one cannot help but be reminded of the politically motivated shooting and killing of 25 people and wounding of 50 other men, women and children in West Kingston in 2001 by soldiers and police. Nor can one remove from their minds the image of bodies left lying in the streets for those four days in July, dead, rotting, eaten by dogs. The West Kingston Massacre, as it has come to be known, has to be the worst act of state terrorism in our country's history.
And you know what? No-one was held accountable then. The people of Jamaica didn't rise up and protest the killings. In fact, generally speaking the public sanctioned the massacre as the unfortunate result of a security search for guns and ammunition -- though none were found. No good has come from it. Twenty-five men died in vain.
If we could allow such an atrocity to be committed by a government against its own people, then what's to stop a prime minister from telling a little lie?
If we must die, indeed.
TAMARA SCOTT-WILLIAMS
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Bookmark and Share
ESSENTIALLY what they're saying to each other, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to the People's National Party (PNP), and vice versa is: "My moral authority is bigger than your moral authority". It's all one big ****************ing match, if you ask me, and while the Government of Jamaica and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition put their deeds and misdeeds to the ruler, the citizens of Jamaica are being caught up in the stream.
Organised political and social groups may be blowing hot and heavy, calling for the immediate resignation of the prime minister -- for, in effect, deceiving the nation about who had engaged the services of the American law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in the matter of the extradition request for Christopher Coke -- but it is in fact the prime minister's Cabinet, those ministers who decided that he should be the prime minister, who must now decide whether they are confident that Bruce Golding is still fit to be their leader.
GOLDING… if he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering his seemingly bipolar antics and differentiating when he’s speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he’s speaking as leader of the JLP
[Hide Description] GOLDING… if he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering his seemingly bipolar antics and differentiating when he’s speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he’s speaking as leader of the JLP
[Restore Description]
1/1
Whatever the nine-day outcome, what is for sure is that life as we know it will never be the same, and in fact may become worse. If he is to stay on as prime minister, then the JLP, the PNP, and the people of Jamaica will have the awesome task of deciphering the seemingly bipolar antics of the prime minister and differentiating when he's speaking as Prime Minister from those times that he's speaking as leader of the JLP.
Whatever the case, it is certain that trust has gone out of the window. Mr Golding has seen it fit to mislead the country in a bid to strengthen his administration's refusal to extradite an alleged drug dealer and gun-runner, while the murder rate climbs daily and the heinousness and randomness of the crimes committed against the people of Jamaica increase without his direct intervention.
And so, while we appreciate the sentiment of Peter Bunting, general secretary of the PNP, that in order for Jamaicans to free the country from the criminality we must put our lives on the line, we feel he could not have chosen a more unfortunate reference than to cite Jamaican poet Claude McKay's sonnet If We Must Die.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honour us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
About the poem, which "exploded out of him" during the days of the lynchings and Harlem riots of 1919, Claude McKay wrote: "Our Negro newspapers were morbid, full of details of clashes between coloured and white, murderous shootings and hangings. Travelling from city to city and unable to gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous. We were less light-hearted.
"We did not separate from one another gaily to spend ourselves in speakeasies and gambling joints. We stuck together, some of us armed, going from the railroad station to our quarters. We stayed in our quarters all through the dreary ominous nights, for we never knew what was going to happen."
After reading the poem, one cannot help but be reminded of the politically motivated shooting and killing of 25 people and wounding of 50 other men, women and children in West Kingston in 2001 by soldiers and police. Nor can one remove from their minds the image of bodies left lying in the streets for those four days in July, dead, rotting, eaten by dogs. The West Kingston Massacre, as it has come to be known, has to be the worst act of state terrorism in our country's history.
And you know what? No-one was held accountable then. The people of Jamaica didn't rise up and protest the killings. In fact, generally speaking the public sanctioned the massacre as the unfortunate result of a security search for guns and ammunition -- though none were found. No good has come from it. Twenty-five men died in vain.
If we could allow such an atrocity to be committed by a government against its own people, then what's to stop a prime minister from telling a little lie?
If we must die, indeed.
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