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Golding closes book after writing first chapter
Mark Wignall
Thursday, September 29, 2011
BRUCE Golding bit his lower lip, lowered his head, allowed the merest hint of a smile to come across his face then stared across the room in a moment of contemplation.
It was 1999 and we were in a small dining area adjoining his kitchen at his Millsborough Avenue residence. If my memory serves me well, the breakfast included fried dumplings, salted fish and fried slices of ripe plantains. He was about 10 seconds into pondering the question I had asked him. It was: "Are you afraid of becoming prime minister?"
With the half smile still on his face, he stared me in the eye and answered, "No," but the delay was telling.
I was at his home on two missions. To me his foray in the National Democratic Movement (NDM), was in 1999, effectively at an end but to my way of seeing things politically Bruce Golding still had a contribution to make on the national stage. My first mission was to probe his mind on his possible political ambitions. The second was to prod him into re-entering the JLP.
"Can you imagine what someone like you would do to me in the media," he said. "You would slay me."
I was lobbying on behalf of myself. "Your NDM ideas are sound and under Seaga's leadership, the JLP is effectively dead. I know that the political directions of both the JLP and PNP and their connections to goons and guns and garrisons will take this country nowhere. You articulated that perfectly in 1997 -- no other politician in Jamaica has ever done that. To me the NDM has no structure and is effectively dead in the mind of the public. The JLP has a working structure, a political machinery. Why could you not use that structure to advance the noble ideas of the NDM?"
For another few seconds he wandered off on another visible trip of contemplation. "You want me to give you an answer now but it is never that easy." We spoke about other matters as his gracious, charming wife passed through and greeted me. The look on her face told me that she shared my 'lobbying' efforts.
In 1995, after Brascoe Lee (ex-JLP Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s), Keith Russell and a few others had put together what eventually became the NDM, in a blaze of public acclamation the movement was heralded in as the first real challenge of a third party to the entrenched JLP and PNP elite club. With Golding as the president, NDM fever was on in earnest.
With as much as 20 per cent showing in the polls in its infancy, the indications were that Jamaicans were hungry for a new approach to our politics. By the end of 1996, one sensed that Golding's body was in the NDM but his mind was elsewhere. In the 1997 general elections the leadership malaise of Golding along with an electorate umbilically connected to the ghosts of their JLP and PNP pasts had conspired to pronounce the death of the NDM.
Years later in a conversation I had with Brascoe Lee, he said: "The growth and development of the NDM were interrupted by the elections of 1997. It was a big mistake for us to enter that contest."
As I saw it, the repeated wins of the PNP and even my personal voting support for that party in 1993, 1997 and 2002 were a combination of voters remaining in a 'comfort zone' with the leadership of the PNP's PJ Patterson and the intense dislike they had for the JLP's Eddie Seaga. Seaga of course was prepared to hold on to the very end to prove that he could replicate the massive win of 1980.
As my articles in the 1990's and the early 2000's stridently dismissed the possibility of another hurrah for Seaga, I saw Golding as that lynchpin that could break the back of the stranglehold that the PNP had on the voters because of Seaga's refusal to remove himself. To me the country needed a two-party democracy in action and Seaga's continued presence as leader of the JLP was destroying that.
In 2002, I found myself at Daryl Vaz's private office along with Bruce Golding and a few other influential political personalities as Golding tweaked the MoU that formed the conditions for his re-entry to the JLP. As faxes were sent back and forth and the final document was signed I was the first person in the media to congratulate Golding.
As I shook his hand I said, "Welcome to history."
In response he said, probably jokingly, "Or the political graveyard."
As Golding shocked the nation last Sunday with his resignation, only Daryl Vaz, the information minister would have known of the deep, personal pain that was a part of Golding's make-up since the middle of last year when everything that could ever go wrong, went horribly wrong in the Dudus/Manatt saga.
We expect our political leaders to be superhuman but in that moment before they go to bed at nights, all of the frailties of the human condition must come pouring out. The bad judgments and destructive politics embarked on during that phase of Golding's leadership could just never square with his 'new and different' mode in 1995.
In the end, the ingrained, systemic politics, coupled with extremely poor judgement on Golding's part broke something inside of him. After that, how could he continue to lead? How could he go to himself at nights without repeated, haunting nightmares?
After the 1997 loss of his Central St Catherine garrison seat (under the NDM ticket), I did not see a disappointed Bruce Golding. I saw instead a man who had purged his soul of the very nastiness of the politics that he had walked away from in 1995.
In retrospect, as he re-entered the JLP in 2002, his efforts were like that path to hell -- paved with good intentions. The system turned out to be stronger than he was and did not allow him to finish his book.
A year ago he had battled the same demons but was, against his wishes, pushed into staying on. A year later, it was just too much and as the dam broke, so did his will to continue.
A few weeks ago I was on a radio programme along with Kevin O'Brien Chang, who had made the suggestion that the JLP should change its leader while I suggested that one year out, it would be a disaster to do so.
It is now up to the JLP to choose the right path as the leadership succession race heats up. It can opt for destruction or surprise us by creating a new and different template for its internal change.
observemark@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1ZLNBKGld
Mark Wignall
Thursday, September 29, 2011
BRUCE Golding bit his lower lip, lowered his head, allowed the merest hint of a smile to come across his face then stared across the room in a moment of contemplation.
It was 1999 and we were in a small dining area adjoining his kitchen at his Millsborough Avenue residence. If my memory serves me well, the breakfast included fried dumplings, salted fish and fried slices of ripe plantains. He was about 10 seconds into pondering the question I had asked him. It was: "Are you afraid of becoming prime minister?"
With the half smile still on his face, he stared me in the eye and answered, "No," but the delay was telling.
I was at his home on two missions. To me his foray in the National Democratic Movement (NDM), was in 1999, effectively at an end but to my way of seeing things politically Bruce Golding still had a contribution to make on the national stage. My first mission was to probe his mind on his possible political ambitions. The second was to prod him into re-entering the JLP.
"Can you imagine what someone like you would do to me in the media," he said. "You would slay me."
I was lobbying on behalf of myself. "Your NDM ideas are sound and under Seaga's leadership, the JLP is effectively dead. I know that the political directions of both the JLP and PNP and their connections to goons and guns and garrisons will take this country nowhere. You articulated that perfectly in 1997 -- no other politician in Jamaica has ever done that. To me the NDM has no structure and is effectively dead in the mind of the public. The JLP has a working structure, a political machinery. Why could you not use that structure to advance the noble ideas of the NDM?"
For another few seconds he wandered off on another visible trip of contemplation. "You want me to give you an answer now but it is never that easy." We spoke about other matters as his gracious, charming wife passed through and greeted me. The look on her face told me that she shared my 'lobbying' efforts.
In 1995, after Brascoe Lee (ex-JLP Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s), Keith Russell and a few others had put together what eventually became the NDM, in a blaze of public acclamation the movement was heralded in as the first real challenge of a third party to the entrenched JLP and PNP elite club. With Golding as the president, NDM fever was on in earnest.
With as much as 20 per cent showing in the polls in its infancy, the indications were that Jamaicans were hungry for a new approach to our politics. By the end of 1996, one sensed that Golding's body was in the NDM but his mind was elsewhere. In the 1997 general elections the leadership malaise of Golding along with an electorate umbilically connected to the ghosts of their JLP and PNP pasts had conspired to pronounce the death of the NDM.
Years later in a conversation I had with Brascoe Lee, he said: "The growth and development of the NDM were interrupted by the elections of 1997. It was a big mistake for us to enter that contest."
As I saw it, the repeated wins of the PNP and even my personal voting support for that party in 1993, 1997 and 2002 were a combination of voters remaining in a 'comfort zone' with the leadership of the PNP's PJ Patterson and the intense dislike they had for the JLP's Eddie Seaga. Seaga of course was prepared to hold on to the very end to prove that he could replicate the massive win of 1980.
As my articles in the 1990's and the early 2000's stridently dismissed the possibility of another hurrah for Seaga, I saw Golding as that lynchpin that could break the back of the stranglehold that the PNP had on the voters because of Seaga's refusal to remove himself. To me the country needed a two-party democracy in action and Seaga's continued presence as leader of the JLP was destroying that.
In 2002, I found myself at Daryl Vaz's private office along with Bruce Golding and a few other influential political personalities as Golding tweaked the MoU that formed the conditions for his re-entry to the JLP. As faxes were sent back and forth and the final document was signed I was the first person in the media to congratulate Golding.
As I shook his hand I said, "Welcome to history."
In response he said, probably jokingly, "Or the political graveyard."
As Golding shocked the nation last Sunday with his resignation, only Daryl Vaz, the information minister would have known of the deep, personal pain that was a part of Golding's make-up since the middle of last year when everything that could ever go wrong, went horribly wrong in the Dudus/Manatt saga.
We expect our political leaders to be superhuman but in that moment before they go to bed at nights, all of the frailties of the human condition must come pouring out. The bad judgments and destructive politics embarked on during that phase of Golding's leadership could just never square with his 'new and different' mode in 1995.
In the end, the ingrained, systemic politics, coupled with extremely poor judgement on Golding's part broke something inside of him. After that, how could he continue to lead? How could he go to himself at nights without repeated, haunting nightmares?
After the 1997 loss of his Central St Catherine garrison seat (under the NDM ticket), I did not see a disappointed Bruce Golding. I saw instead a man who had purged his soul of the very nastiness of the politics that he had walked away from in 1995.
In retrospect, as he re-entered the JLP in 2002, his efforts were like that path to hell -- paved with good intentions. The system turned out to be stronger than he was and did not allow him to finish his book.
A year ago he had battled the same demons but was, against his wishes, pushed into staying on. A year later, it was just too much and as the dam broke, so did his will to continue.
A few weeks ago I was on a radio programme along with Kevin O'Brien Chang, who had made the suggestion that the JLP should change its leader while I suggested that one year out, it would be a disaster to do so.
It is now up to the JLP to choose the right path as the leadership succession race heats up. It can opt for destruction or surprise us by creating a new and different template for its internal change.
observemark@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1ZLNBKGld
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