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Whose country is this?
Published: Tuesday | July 13, 2010
Robinson
Gordon Robinson, Contributor
The People's National Party (PNP) is once again exposed as driven by craven, classless, power hungry cowardice and seeking national office whilst ignoring its tactics' adverse effect on Jamaica.
Norman Manley, the father of regionalism, is rolling in his grave. Were he alive to see his party's contumelious disrespect of CARICOM, he'd die again from shame. The PNP's boycott of the MoBay opening of the CARICOM heads of government meeting has all the earmarks of low, selfish, crawling gutter-sniping of the sort that 'Presi' and gang were accused by security farces of using to slither out of Tivoli. In case the PNP isn't aware, Jamaica belongs to us, not to any gutless gathering of has-beens and 'never-wases'.
With apologies to Woody Guthrie (and Pete Seeger):
"This land is your land, this land is my land, from Port Antonio to the Negril beachland. From the Cockpit Country to the Hellshire waters, this land was made for you and me."
What on earth has CARICOM done to Jamaica or to the PNP? Of what earthly business is it of the PNP as to who is CARICOM's next chairman? This is a post to which the nation is elected by other nations and not one personal to Bruce Golding, or anyone else. This is a great honour for Jamaica, not a matter for pusillanimous carping and complaining.
Only the most ill-mannered among us wash their dirty linen in public. So why is the PNP asking us to support this vulgar, backbiting boycott of a regional event which only serves to diminish Jamaica's status in the eyes of our Caribbean brethren? Is it CARICOM's fault that the PNP, in a public show of strategic stupidity, brought a no-confidence motion against the prime minister to parliament where it was doomed to failure, and then proceeded to support that poorly drafted motion with arguments more insipid than Banks beer? Then, as if believing they hadn't self-inflicted enough embarrassment, a similar motion is brought against the justice minister. Her crime, according to the PNP, was to have signed the authority to proceed against Dudus. But the PNP and the entire nation had been demanding her signature for months. This has to be the Guy Lombardo Show!
Set in their ways
It's incredulous that the PNP, rumoured to be an experienced political party, has struggled to craft effective strategies to make the Government atone for its recent egregious display of contempt for the nation. The reason for the butterfingered approach to the simple catch offered is that they have become so set in their slothful, incompetent, take-the-people-for-granted attitude that there's no longer the initiative or inclination to work.
In a nation whose people are pauperised by an economy so askew that its currency re-values despite the absence of support in production; where innocents are slaughtered by security farces without enquiry; where states of emergency are perpetuated in the absence of public or any emergency; where new jobs are non-existent; where career civil servants are terminated by political appointees' whim; where our public service has itself become a cesspool of corruption and a madhouse of mediocrity, a sincere opposition worth tuppence would long ago have forced compliance with honour and good governance.
"In the squares of the city; in the shadow of a steeple; by the relief office, I'd seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, is this land made for you and me?"
We have unjust taxes to boycott (especially on essential-services monopolies like electricity) but it's safer to boycott regional conferences. It's easier to whine to national neighbours ("Aunty Antigua, Bruce beat me (sob)!") than to DO SOMETHING about our complaints. Hence, the PNP appears militant; can solicit political contributions without accountability whilst making insincere noises about party-funding reform; keeps us chasing our collective behinds voting pot out and kettle in until sucked up the cavity by a good-governance vacuum, to be replaced by a new generation of weasel-chasing monkeys until the illusion that the weasel goes 'pop', and we see that we've been chasing nothing all along.
This is one simpleton who won't shut up; who won't be told how to think; who won't be distracted by brainless boycotts from focussing on the need for good governance systems; who won't be seduced into casting a useless, ineffective vote in sham elections.
"Nobody living can ever stop me as I go walking that freedom highway. Nobody living can ever make me turn back. This land was made for you and me."
Peace and love.
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