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POLITICAL FRATRICIDE IN JAMAICA: THE CASE OF THE JLP
Any serious analyst of the Jamaican political landscape would have been taken aback if there were not a serious political challenge to Andrew Holness after his embarrassing defeat by Portia Simpson-Miller in the Dec. 29, 2011 national election.
The embittered opposition leader’s reaction to a challenge by his Parliamentary colleague, Audley Shaw, immediately brings into focus his embryonic autocratic traits. This leads to persua-sive arguments that, if given the reins of power with the Jamaica Labor Party on a long-term ba-sis, he will behave in a manner similar to that of his mentor, Edward Seaga, the former prime minister and longest-serving member of the po-litical organization.
This perceived autocratic tendency is an al-batross around his neck, and he has to signal to the more than 5,000 delegates who will be de-ciding his politi-cal fate on Nov. 10 that he is committed to democratic gov-ernance of the internal affairs of the JLP and government if given another opportunity to occupy Jamaica House in the near future.
It’s a hard sell on his part. The opposition leader is his own worst enemy—as is seen in his intransigence over the Report of the Strategic Review commissioned by the JLP hierarchy in the wake of the 2011 general election and last year’s local government election. On a tragic note, he has allowed the proverbial or colloquial ‘golden spoon to slip from his grasp” and given his detractors the ammunition they need to challenge his leadership of the party.
His refusal to engage in a frank and open discussion of the report with the Na-tional Executive Committee, the highest-ranking body of the JLP, demonstrated his total opposition to the concept of collective responsibility and a glaring disregard for his colleagues at the highest level of inter-nal governance.
This widely recognized autocratic thread within the JLP, since its origins in 1943, is what has driven away some of “the brightest and the best” sons and daughters from it. Indeed, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding hit the nail on the head when he declared that since its creation in 1943 by Alexander Bustamante, the JLP has been leader-centric.
The Dawning of Absolutist Party Leadership
The first two decades saw a leader-ship style by Bustamante reminiscent of Peronism in Argentina, or Sukar-noism in Indonesia, or Nkrumahism in Ghana. This absolutist leadership style might have been necessary during the JLP’s formative years, when the unedu-cated majority needed a populist leader able to defend their socioeconomic in-terests against colonial overlords.
Perhaps Jamaica’s second prime minister, Donald Sangster (Feb. 21, 1967-April 5, 1967) would have be-come more democratic with his Cabinet members and the captains of finance and industry throughout the body poli-tic.
Unfortunately, he died from a brain aneurysm in a hospital in Montreal on April 12, 1967. His successor, the first accidental prime min-ister, Hugh Lawson Shearer (April 5, 1967-Feb. 29, 1972), engaged in a collective-leadership style because he was unprepared for the awe-some responsibilities of the Office of the Prime Minister. He was more interested in the role of island supervisor of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union and was eager to abdicate the lead-ership position of the JLP. He did not have the “fire in the gut” for party leadership; he was far more comfortable with the give-and-take of trade unionism and relished his role as acting president and island supervisor.
On the death of Bustamante (Aug. 6, 1977), Shearer became president and served in that ca-pacity until his death on July 5, 2003. He never interfered in the JLP’s internal affairs during Seaga’s long tenure (Nov. 23, 1974-Jan. 19, 2005).
A Brain Drain Hobbles the Party
It is important to note that it was in the first 10 years of Seaga’s presidency of the JLP that we witnessed the decimation of some of the brightest sons and daughters of the party. Seaga had the distinction of being the first leader of the JLP to be given its presidency. The transfer of the powerful title was made possible by the dele-gates’ conferring on the Founder the venerable title of Chief. The title was then inscribed into the JLP’s constitution.
The party has not yet recovered from the ir-reconcilable personal and political conflicts be-tween Seaga and prominent JLP members in law, medicine and academia—intellectual and professional heavyweights. They include lumi-naries such as Ian Ramsay, Q.C., Frank Phipps, Q.C.; Wilton Hill, Q.C.; and surgeon Ronald Irvine. (See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leader-ship, Vol. 1, Chapter 15, pp 204-220.)
A ready comparison can be made with the ideological and personal conflicts of the 1940s between renowned People’s National Party (PNP) reformers—such as O.T. Fairclough; Norman Washington Manley; Noel Nethersole; Howard Cooke; Florizel Glasspole; William O. Isaacs; Ivan Lloyd, M.D.; Edith Dalton James; and Ru-dolph Burke—who were pit-ted against the four firebrand communists—Richard Hart, Authur L. Henry, Frank Hill and Ken Hill.
In 1949, the four rad-icals were expelled from the PNP’s Executive Commit-tee. The PNP did not miss a beat. Through the 1950s and into the early ’60s, it attract-ed the young intelligentsia and professionals returning home from universities in London, including people like: Michael and Douglas Manley; Hugh and Richard Small; Anthony Spaulding; David Coore; Percival James Patterson; Gladstone and Don Mills; Frederick C. hamaty; and Burchell Whiiteman.
In the late 1960s, the PNP reaped an influx of young academicians from the three campuses of the University of the West Indies at Mona (Jamaica), St. Augustine (Trinidad) and Cave Hill (Barbados). They included: Arnold Ber-tram, first-class honors in history, UWI-Mona; D.K. Duncan, a dental surgeon from McGill University in Montreal; Omar Davies, Ph.D., of the Department of Economics at UWI-Mona, with a doctorate from Northwestern University in Chicago; and Paul Robertson, Ph.D., of the Department of Government at UWI-Mona, with a doctorate in political science from the Univer-sity of Michigan. (He was a classmate of mine in the earl 1970s at UM.)
In the late 1970s, we have the recruitment of Anthony Hylton, Esq., a University of Maryland graduate with a law degree from the New York University School of Law; Peter Phillips, Ph.D., of UWI-Mona, with a doctorate in political sci-ence from the State University of New York-Binghamton; and Peter Bunting, a UWI-St. Augustine engineering graduate with an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technolo-gy.
Mediocrity: A Desired ‘Leadership’ Trait
Reference is made to the aggressive recruit-ment efforts of the hierarchy of the PNP to il-lustrate the different approach to governance within that political organization and when it is in control of the reins of power at Jamaica House.
The talent pool the party creates through aggressive recruitment fosters mutual respect among colleagues that makes frank and open discussions without rancor possible. This is not the case, however, with the JLP, whose hierarchy does not aggressively recruit from the tertiary campuses throughout Caricom or in the interlocking global village; its very mindset lends itself to producing leader-centric or autocratic party leaders and prime ministers.
The JLP’s refusal to seek out the available “best and brightest” has sent a message to the broader Jamaican body politic and the Diaspora that its hierarchy is committed to a meritocracy of mediocrity. In the absence of recruiting ef-forts, the JLP has been responsible for the mete-oric rise of new leaders such as Andrew Holness and Dr. Christopher Tufton. Their ascendancy to the top layer of the JLP and government could not have happened in the PNP. Long tenure is a prerequisite for senior positions and Cabinet ap-pointments. It is for this reason that the presi-dential race between Audley Shaw and Holness is so vital to a remapping of the JLP’s organiza-tional structure.
It is a bit disquieting that JLP veterans like Ken Baugh, M.D., dmund Bartlett, Pearnel Charles, Mike Henry and Babsy Grange have been sidelined by the “young Turks”—Tufton and Holness. Neither of them has been involved in the JLP for even a decade, yet they wield enormous power. No wonder neither Shaw nor Holness can defeat the political machinery in local or national elections.
Ever-Shifting Allegiances
It is easy to conclude that the opposition leader is correct in his assessment that his oppo-nent is supported by the former influential mem-bers of the divisive Bruce Golding’s National Democratic Movement (NDM), which eventual-ly merged with the JLP in mid-August of 2002.
Both presidential candidates are Seaga’s pro-tégés. Audley Shaw has been unquestionably loyal to Seaga—so much so, that he has earned the moniker “Waterboy.” He was seen as Seaga’s heir apparent after Golding split from the JLP on Oct. 29, 1995, but suf-fered a severe setback when Seaga succumbed to the monied class, who promised him $100 million (JA) to wage the final phase of the Oct. 16, 2002 general elec-tion if he would bring Golding back into the fold and instead make him the heir apparent. The monied class has now shifted its support to Shaw.
Seaga captures this mind-boggling develop-ment in his autobiography. He writes:
I had not intended to invite Golding back into the party before the election as this would not be popular with the deputy leaders, some of whom saw themselves as a possible successor to me. They knew that Golding could pre-empt them all. I had planned to re-introduce him after the election be-cause, notwithstanding all the double dealings against me in the 1900s enacted with or without his involve-ment, he was still the best bet for the future.
In terms of his national profile, I had to think of the future of the party, not my own feelings. But with such a magnanimous offer of funding, I decided to advance the timetable. While it would be a turn-off to some, it would be a boost to me. So I agreed.
(See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leadership, Vol. 2, Hard Road to Travel, 1980-2008. Macmillan 2010, p. 324.)
Holness is batting on a sticky wicket when he attacks his oppo-nent as a disloyal member of the JLP over the past three decades. Shaw has more seniority within the JLP than Holness does, and more national clout as the opposition party’s shadow Cabinet spokesman on finance and public service. Shaw’s fearless critiques of P.J. Patterson’s regime (March 30, 1992-March 30, 2006) and that of Portia Simp-son Miller (March 20, 2006-Sept. 7, 2007) earned him the moniker “Man A Yaard.”
Where is Seaga in this impending presiden-tial election? Will he be neutral—unlike mid-summer 2011, when it was said that he was the king mak-er who propelled Holness to Jamai-ca House after Golding’s inevitable resignation over the sordid Dudus Coke scandal that was a national and international body blow to the Jamaican identity? The Obama ad-ministration’s role in Golding’s resignation is still being debated in academic, diplomatic and journal-istic circles.
Shaw was a heartbeat away from becoming and achieving his patient personal goal of becoming prime minis-ter after Golding’s resignation. At that meet-ing—at attorney Harold Brady’s home in Upper St. Andrews—it was believed that Holness would come to give his approval. But he report-edly was ordered by Seaga to go to the meeting and oppose any such transition of power. Everyone at the meeting was shocked by the turn of events, a dramatic reversal of their plans. A few days later, with their capitulation, Holness would be-come prime minister and president of the JLP.
We in the media and the academy in Jamaica and the Dias-pora are waiting for verification or repudiation of these commen-taries. There is a powerful argu-ment that a Jamaican conglomer-ate gave a $9 million (US) check to the Andrew Holness Team to contest a presidential election at the 2011 JLP’s annual conference if the parliamentary group refused to endorse him as the new prime minister and JLP president. It is alleged that the very generous gift served as the bulk of the funding of more than $1 billion (JA) that the JLP had in its war chest, and which gave the party an overconfidence in the earlier-than-expected Dec. 29, 2011 general election.
What is disquieting to this writer is that no one in Jamaica’s journalistic, aca-demic or political arena has been able to get the names of the JLP parliamentarians and power elites who were at attorney Harold Brad-y’s home to endorse Audley Shaw as the only candidate to succeed his nemesis, Bruce Golding.
What about the $9-million (US) check that Holness reportedly threw on the table at Brady’s home when he arrived and asked how his parliamentary colleagues wanted him to use it—to wage a presiden-tial campaign at the October or No-vember 2012 JLP annual confer-ence, or stash it in the war chest for an election campaign against the embattled Portia Simpson-Miller and the short-of-funds PNP political machinery?
Certainly Holness and his inner circle within the JLP—new treasurer Karl Samuda, Ms. Bab-sy Grange, and acting chairman Robert Monta-gue—got the shock of their political lives when the PNP political machinery, led by strategist par excellence P.J. Patterson, sent the most cor-rupt political regime in our short independent polity (Golding/Holness, Sept. 7, 2007-Dec. 29, 2011) to its well-deserved political grave.
More Intrigue with the Gang of Five
Edmund Bartlett’s decision to support Shaw is a major blow to the Holness team. It was Bart-lett who recruited Holness into Seaga’s faction of the party. Although Bartlett was a member of the 1990 conspiratorial group, hailed by the then-referred pollster/UWI academician Carl Stone as “The Gang of Five,” Bartlett was never a member of Golding’s 1990s embryonic National Democratic Movement. Indeed his near-suicidal decision to join with four other former Cabinet ministers—Pearnel Charles, Douglas Vaz, Karl Samuda and Errol Anderson—to re-move his political benefactor as presi-dent of the JLP is still perplexing to this writer.
It is a Shakespearean act, much like Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar. He had survived multiple wounds inflicted by his enemies, but te had survivedhat final stab by a one-trusted ally was such an un-expected betrayal that the shock of it, rather than the actual wound itself, hastened Caesar’s death. So it must have been for Seaga, when it came to learn that his protégé was engaged in a plot to remove him. Lucky for Bartlett, Seaga’s pater-nalism, and not his well-known Macchiavellian ways, prevailed and spared Bartlett an eternity in political purgatory.
Bartlett has been more a biological than po-litical son of Seaga for more than three decades. The only other person in the JLP who has been that close to him is Desmond McKenzie, the for-mer mayor of Kingston, and his successor in the “safe” Parliamentary seat in Western Kingston. It is in the conspiratorial Gang of Five meet-ings that both Bartlett and Pearnel Charles recognized that Golding could not be trusted as a political colleague, and that he was a self-centered politician who was willing to destroy others’ political careers to advance his own to become the leader of the JLP.
Golding has a dynastic belief that he was destined to lead the JLP, his father Tacius Golding being the first Speaker of the House in independent Jamaica. This sense of enti-tlement led him to become the scheming politician par excellence.
In the upcoming presidential election, Bartlett is supporting Shaw. His coconspira-tors in the Gang of Five, Charles and Samuda, are staunch Holness supporters. We see an inter-esting development in which the two emerging power elites within the JLP—Daryl Vaz and James Robinson—are in different camps in this political tussle. Vaz is supporting Shaw; Robin-son is supporting Holness.
Of Principles and Principalities
We await Golding’s autobiography. We need to hear from him whether he was involved in the Gang of Five’s conspiratorial activities. One of the plotters has insinuated that it was Golding who set their underhanded plan in motion. Was it his home where the discussions took place? Unfortunately, Seaga did not give us that valua-ble piece of information. (See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leadership, Vol. 2, Hard Road to Travel, 1980-2008. Macmillan 2010, p. 187.)
Intriguingly, Holness became an accidental prime minister because of Golding’s inexplica-ble defense in the hallowed halls of Gordon house of Dudus Coke, the drug kingpin and gun trafficker who was indicted by a federal court in New York City. It had to be a pledge he made to Coke for him to become a Member of Parlia-ment and leader of the JLP that led Golding to trample the norms and customs of Parliament to give Coke immunity and stayed his extradition to the United States to stand trial for his numer-ous crimes.
Golding had schemed for more than 20 years to become prime minister. In the end, he squan-dered his po-litical achievements because of his obstinacy and exagger-ated sense of self-importance that he was defending Jamaica’s territorial sovereignty.
Hol-ness blew a golden opportunity to be a decisive leader in the messy Dudus Coke debacle. His sense of loyalty to his political leader and the prime minister of Jamaica prevented him from seeking his removal as the occupant of Jamaica House at the zenith of the crisis. Justifying his right to remain the leader of the JLP against all pretenders, Holness tells us:
“I have never done anything to undermine any leader…. Whoever was leader of the party, I gave 100-percent support….Principle…. is why, when I was asked as House Leader to remove Mr. Golding as prime minister by directing the members of Parliament to go to the governor-general, I refused to do it because it would have been the greatest ignominy, because I am a party man and I believe in principle.” (See “Betrayed! Holness Hurt By Those Who Abandoned JLP Now Undermining His Leadership Upon Re-turn,” by Gary Spaulding, senior writer, Sunday Gleaner, Sept. 22, 2013, p A2.)
Holness no doubt will have Golding’s sup-port in this presidential contest with such blind loyalty when his Parliamentary colleagues were instructing him to rescue the country and the JLP from international embarrassment. Once again, Holness’s political immaturity emerges to show that he does not have the acumen to lead the JLP or Jamaica as prime minister.
It must be noted that Golding did not have him in mind on that fateful night when he re-signed on national television and radio as prime minister of Jamaica. In championing a youthful successor from the post-colonial polity rather than any of his older colleagues from Parlia-ment, it was Dr. Christopher Tufton, not Hol-ness, that Golding had in mind to succeed him at Jamaica House. Indeed, he had put the process in motion by his stunning decision in his Cabinet reshuffle, when he removed Samuda from the encompassing Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and replaced him with Tufton, who was doing a creditable job at the Ministry of Agriculture.
It was a bold political decision by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to drop Samuda from the Cabinet at a time when he was the general secretary of the JLP. It was an unprecedented decision in our political history. But Golding and Tufton were shellshocked when the wily Seaga stepped in and got his “pound of flesh” for the decades of treachery by someone he had groomed as his heir apparent. It was the culmi-nation of the perennial rivalry between Seaga and Golding.
History almost repeated itself in those excit-ing months. Jamaicans at home and abroad amost witnessed a repeat of the president of the opposition party not being a Member of Parlia-ment. Had Tufton been selected as prime minis-ter and JLP president, he might have suffered a similar fate on Dec. 29, 2011 as Norman Wash-ington Manley did in 1944. It must be borne in mind that in the first general election under adult suffrage to the House of Representatives, Man-ley lost by 395 votes to the JLP’s candidate, Ed-ward H. Fagan, an electrodermatologist. (See “Leadership Splits in PNP, JLP” by Troy Craine, The Sunday Gleaner, Sept. 29, 2013, p. F14.)
That is the bottom line.
http://www.caribbean-american-news.c...ublication.pdf
Any serious analyst of the Jamaican political landscape would have been taken aback if there were not a serious political challenge to Andrew Holness after his embarrassing defeat by Portia Simpson-Miller in the Dec. 29, 2011 national election.
The embittered opposition leader’s reaction to a challenge by his Parliamentary colleague, Audley Shaw, immediately brings into focus his embryonic autocratic traits. This leads to persua-sive arguments that, if given the reins of power with the Jamaica Labor Party on a long-term ba-sis, he will behave in a manner similar to that of his mentor, Edward Seaga, the former prime minister and longest-serving member of the po-litical organization.
This perceived autocratic tendency is an al-batross around his neck, and he has to signal to the more than 5,000 delegates who will be de-ciding his politi-cal fate on Nov. 10 that he is committed to democratic gov-ernance of the internal affairs of the JLP and government if given another opportunity to occupy Jamaica House in the near future.
It’s a hard sell on his part. The opposition leader is his own worst enemy—as is seen in his intransigence over the Report of the Strategic Review commissioned by the JLP hierarchy in the wake of the 2011 general election and last year’s local government election. On a tragic note, he has allowed the proverbial or colloquial ‘golden spoon to slip from his grasp” and given his detractors the ammunition they need to challenge his leadership of the party.
His refusal to engage in a frank and open discussion of the report with the Na-tional Executive Committee, the highest-ranking body of the JLP, demonstrated his total opposition to the concept of collective responsibility and a glaring disregard for his colleagues at the highest level of inter-nal governance.
This widely recognized autocratic thread within the JLP, since its origins in 1943, is what has driven away some of “the brightest and the best” sons and daughters from it. Indeed, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding hit the nail on the head when he declared that since its creation in 1943 by Alexander Bustamante, the JLP has been leader-centric.
The Dawning of Absolutist Party Leadership
The first two decades saw a leader-ship style by Bustamante reminiscent of Peronism in Argentina, or Sukar-noism in Indonesia, or Nkrumahism in Ghana. This absolutist leadership style might have been necessary during the JLP’s formative years, when the unedu-cated majority needed a populist leader able to defend their socioeconomic in-terests against colonial overlords.
Perhaps Jamaica’s second prime minister, Donald Sangster (Feb. 21, 1967-April 5, 1967) would have be-come more democratic with his Cabinet members and the captains of finance and industry throughout the body poli-tic.
Unfortunately, he died from a brain aneurysm in a hospital in Montreal on April 12, 1967. His successor, the first accidental prime min-ister, Hugh Lawson Shearer (April 5, 1967-Feb. 29, 1972), engaged in a collective-leadership style because he was unprepared for the awe-some responsibilities of the Office of the Prime Minister. He was more interested in the role of island supervisor of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union and was eager to abdicate the lead-ership position of the JLP. He did not have the “fire in the gut” for party leadership; he was far more comfortable with the give-and-take of trade unionism and relished his role as acting president and island supervisor.
On the death of Bustamante (Aug. 6, 1977), Shearer became president and served in that ca-pacity until his death on July 5, 2003. He never interfered in the JLP’s internal affairs during Seaga’s long tenure (Nov. 23, 1974-Jan. 19, 2005).
A Brain Drain Hobbles the Party
It is important to note that it was in the first 10 years of Seaga’s presidency of the JLP that we witnessed the decimation of some of the brightest sons and daughters of the party. Seaga had the distinction of being the first leader of the JLP to be given its presidency. The transfer of the powerful title was made possible by the dele-gates’ conferring on the Founder the venerable title of Chief. The title was then inscribed into the JLP’s constitution.
The party has not yet recovered from the ir-reconcilable personal and political conflicts be-tween Seaga and prominent JLP members in law, medicine and academia—intellectual and professional heavyweights. They include lumi-naries such as Ian Ramsay, Q.C., Frank Phipps, Q.C.; Wilton Hill, Q.C.; and surgeon Ronald Irvine. (See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leader-ship, Vol. 1, Chapter 15, pp 204-220.)
A ready comparison can be made with the ideological and personal conflicts of the 1940s between renowned People’s National Party (PNP) reformers—such as O.T. Fairclough; Norman Washington Manley; Noel Nethersole; Howard Cooke; Florizel Glasspole; William O. Isaacs; Ivan Lloyd, M.D.; Edith Dalton James; and Ru-dolph Burke—who were pit-ted against the four firebrand communists—Richard Hart, Authur L. Henry, Frank Hill and Ken Hill.
In 1949, the four rad-icals were expelled from the PNP’s Executive Commit-tee. The PNP did not miss a beat. Through the 1950s and into the early ’60s, it attract-ed the young intelligentsia and professionals returning home from universities in London, including people like: Michael and Douglas Manley; Hugh and Richard Small; Anthony Spaulding; David Coore; Percival James Patterson; Gladstone and Don Mills; Frederick C. hamaty; and Burchell Whiiteman.
In the late 1960s, the PNP reaped an influx of young academicians from the three campuses of the University of the West Indies at Mona (Jamaica), St. Augustine (Trinidad) and Cave Hill (Barbados). They included: Arnold Ber-tram, first-class honors in history, UWI-Mona; D.K. Duncan, a dental surgeon from McGill University in Montreal; Omar Davies, Ph.D., of the Department of Economics at UWI-Mona, with a doctorate from Northwestern University in Chicago; and Paul Robertson, Ph.D., of the Department of Government at UWI-Mona, with a doctorate in political science from the Univer-sity of Michigan. (He was a classmate of mine in the earl 1970s at UM.)
In the late 1970s, we have the recruitment of Anthony Hylton, Esq., a University of Maryland graduate with a law degree from the New York University School of Law; Peter Phillips, Ph.D., of UWI-Mona, with a doctorate in political sci-ence from the State University of New York-Binghamton; and Peter Bunting, a UWI-St. Augustine engineering graduate with an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technolo-gy.
Mediocrity: A Desired ‘Leadership’ Trait
Reference is made to the aggressive recruit-ment efforts of the hierarchy of the PNP to il-lustrate the different approach to governance within that political organization and when it is in control of the reins of power at Jamaica House.
The talent pool the party creates through aggressive recruitment fosters mutual respect among colleagues that makes frank and open discussions without rancor possible. This is not the case, however, with the JLP, whose hierarchy does not aggressively recruit from the tertiary campuses throughout Caricom or in the interlocking global village; its very mindset lends itself to producing leader-centric or autocratic party leaders and prime ministers.
The JLP’s refusal to seek out the available “best and brightest” has sent a message to the broader Jamaican body politic and the Diaspora that its hierarchy is committed to a meritocracy of mediocrity. In the absence of recruiting ef-forts, the JLP has been responsible for the mete-oric rise of new leaders such as Andrew Holness and Dr. Christopher Tufton. Their ascendancy to the top layer of the JLP and government could not have happened in the PNP. Long tenure is a prerequisite for senior positions and Cabinet ap-pointments. It is for this reason that the presi-dential race between Audley Shaw and Holness is so vital to a remapping of the JLP’s organiza-tional structure.
It is a bit disquieting that JLP veterans like Ken Baugh, M.D., dmund Bartlett, Pearnel Charles, Mike Henry and Babsy Grange have been sidelined by the “young Turks”—Tufton and Holness. Neither of them has been involved in the JLP for even a decade, yet they wield enormous power. No wonder neither Shaw nor Holness can defeat the political machinery in local or national elections.
Ever-Shifting Allegiances
It is easy to conclude that the opposition leader is correct in his assessment that his oppo-nent is supported by the former influential mem-bers of the divisive Bruce Golding’s National Democratic Movement (NDM), which eventual-ly merged with the JLP in mid-August of 2002.
Both presidential candidates are Seaga’s pro-tégés. Audley Shaw has been unquestionably loyal to Seaga—so much so, that he has earned the moniker “Waterboy.” He was seen as Seaga’s heir apparent after Golding split from the JLP on Oct. 29, 1995, but suf-fered a severe setback when Seaga succumbed to the monied class, who promised him $100 million (JA) to wage the final phase of the Oct. 16, 2002 general elec-tion if he would bring Golding back into the fold and instead make him the heir apparent. The monied class has now shifted its support to Shaw.
Seaga captures this mind-boggling develop-ment in his autobiography. He writes:
I had not intended to invite Golding back into the party before the election as this would not be popular with the deputy leaders, some of whom saw themselves as a possible successor to me. They knew that Golding could pre-empt them all. I had planned to re-introduce him after the election be-cause, notwithstanding all the double dealings against me in the 1900s enacted with or without his involve-ment, he was still the best bet for the future.
In terms of his national profile, I had to think of the future of the party, not my own feelings. But with such a magnanimous offer of funding, I decided to advance the timetable. While it would be a turn-off to some, it would be a boost to me. So I agreed.
(See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leadership, Vol. 2, Hard Road to Travel, 1980-2008. Macmillan 2010, p. 324.)
Holness is batting on a sticky wicket when he attacks his oppo-nent as a disloyal member of the JLP over the past three decades. Shaw has more seniority within the JLP than Holness does, and more national clout as the opposition party’s shadow Cabinet spokesman on finance and public service. Shaw’s fearless critiques of P.J. Patterson’s regime (March 30, 1992-March 30, 2006) and that of Portia Simp-son Miller (March 20, 2006-Sept. 7, 2007) earned him the moniker “Man A Yaard.”
Where is Seaga in this impending presiden-tial election? Will he be neutral—unlike mid-summer 2011, when it was said that he was the king mak-er who propelled Holness to Jamai-ca House after Golding’s inevitable resignation over the sordid Dudus Coke scandal that was a national and international body blow to the Jamaican identity? The Obama ad-ministration’s role in Golding’s resignation is still being debated in academic, diplomatic and journal-istic circles.
Shaw was a heartbeat away from becoming and achieving his patient personal goal of becoming prime minis-ter after Golding’s resignation. At that meet-ing—at attorney Harold Brady’s home in Upper St. Andrews—it was believed that Holness would come to give his approval. But he report-edly was ordered by Seaga to go to the meeting and oppose any such transition of power. Everyone at the meeting was shocked by the turn of events, a dramatic reversal of their plans. A few days later, with their capitulation, Holness would be-come prime minister and president of the JLP.
We in the media and the academy in Jamaica and the Dias-pora are waiting for verification or repudiation of these commen-taries. There is a powerful argu-ment that a Jamaican conglomer-ate gave a $9 million (US) check to the Andrew Holness Team to contest a presidential election at the 2011 JLP’s annual conference if the parliamentary group refused to endorse him as the new prime minister and JLP president. It is alleged that the very generous gift served as the bulk of the funding of more than $1 billion (JA) that the JLP had in its war chest, and which gave the party an overconfidence in the earlier-than-expected Dec. 29, 2011 general election.
What is disquieting to this writer is that no one in Jamaica’s journalistic, aca-demic or political arena has been able to get the names of the JLP parliamentarians and power elites who were at attorney Harold Brad-y’s home to endorse Audley Shaw as the only candidate to succeed his nemesis, Bruce Golding.
What about the $9-million (US) check that Holness reportedly threw on the table at Brady’s home when he arrived and asked how his parliamentary colleagues wanted him to use it—to wage a presiden-tial campaign at the October or No-vember 2012 JLP annual confer-ence, or stash it in the war chest for an election campaign against the embattled Portia Simpson-Miller and the short-of-funds PNP political machinery?
Certainly Holness and his inner circle within the JLP—new treasurer Karl Samuda, Ms. Bab-sy Grange, and acting chairman Robert Monta-gue—got the shock of their political lives when the PNP political machinery, led by strategist par excellence P.J. Patterson, sent the most cor-rupt political regime in our short independent polity (Golding/Holness, Sept. 7, 2007-Dec. 29, 2011) to its well-deserved political grave.
More Intrigue with the Gang of Five
Edmund Bartlett’s decision to support Shaw is a major blow to the Holness team. It was Bart-lett who recruited Holness into Seaga’s faction of the party. Although Bartlett was a member of the 1990 conspiratorial group, hailed by the then-referred pollster/UWI academician Carl Stone as “The Gang of Five,” Bartlett was never a member of Golding’s 1990s embryonic National Democratic Movement. Indeed his near-suicidal decision to join with four other former Cabinet ministers—Pearnel Charles, Douglas Vaz, Karl Samuda and Errol Anderson—to re-move his political benefactor as presi-dent of the JLP is still perplexing to this writer.
It is a Shakespearean act, much like Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar. He had survived multiple wounds inflicted by his enemies, but te had survivedhat final stab by a one-trusted ally was such an un-expected betrayal that the shock of it, rather than the actual wound itself, hastened Caesar’s death. So it must have been for Seaga, when it came to learn that his protégé was engaged in a plot to remove him. Lucky for Bartlett, Seaga’s pater-nalism, and not his well-known Macchiavellian ways, prevailed and spared Bartlett an eternity in political purgatory.
Bartlett has been more a biological than po-litical son of Seaga for more than three decades. The only other person in the JLP who has been that close to him is Desmond McKenzie, the for-mer mayor of Kingston, and his successor in the “safe” Parliamentary seat in Western Kingston. It is in the conspiratorial Gang of Five meet-ings that both Bartlett and Pearnel Charles recognized that Golding could not be trusted as a political colleague, and that he was a self-centered politician who was willing to destroy others’ political careers to advance his own to become the leader of the JLP.
Golding has a dynastic belief that he was destined to lead the JLP, his father Tacius Golding being the first Speaker of the House in independent Jamaica. This sense of enti-tlement led him to become the scheming politician par excellence.
In the upcoming presidential election, Bartlett is supporting Shaw. His coconspira-tors in the Gang of Five, Charles and Samuda, are staunch Holness supporters. We see an inter-esting development in which the two emerging power elites within the JLP—Daryl Vaz and James Robinson—are in different camps in this political tussle. Vaz is supporting Shaw; Robin-son is supporting Holness.
Of Principles and Principalities
We await Golding’s autobiography. We need to hear from him whether he was involved in the Gang of Five’s conspiratorial activities. One of the plotters has insinuated that it was Golding who set their underhanded plan in motion. Was it his home where the discussions took place? Unfortunately, Seaga did not give us that valua-ble piece of information. (See Edward Seaga: My Life and Leadership, Vol. 2, Hard Road to Travel, 1980-2008. Macmillan 2010, p. 187.)
Intriguingly, Holness became an accidental prime minister because of Golding’s inexplica-ble defense in the hallowed halls of Gordon house of Dudus Coke, the drug kingpin and gun trafficker who was indicted by a federal court in New York City. It had to be a pledge he made to Coke for him to become a Member of Parlia-ment and leader of the JLP that led Golding to trample the norms and customs of Parliament to give Coke immunity and stayed his extradition to the United States to stand trial for his numer-ous crimes.
Golding had schemed for more than 20 years to become prime minister. In the end, he squan-dered his po-litical achievements because of his obstinacy and exagger-ated sense of self-importance that he was defending Jamaica’s territorial sovereignty.
Hol-ness blew a golden opportunity to be a decisive leader in the messy Dudus Coke debacle. His sense of loyalty to his political leader and the prime minister of Jamaica prevented him from seeking his removal as the occupant of Jamaica House at the zenith of the crisis. Justifying his right to remain the leader of the JLP against all pretenders, Holness tells us:
“I have never done anything to undermine any leader…. Whoever was leader of the party, I gave 100-percent support….Principle…. is why, when I was asked as House Leader to remove Mr. Golding as prime minister by directing the members of Parliament to go to the governor-general, I refused to do it because it would have been the greatest ignominy, because I am a party man and I believe in principle.” (See “Betrayed! Holness Hurt By Those Who Abandoned JLP Now Undermining His Leadership Upon Re-turn,” by Gary Spaulding, senior writer, Sunday Gleaner, Sept. 22, 2013, p A2.)
Holness no doubt will have Golding’s sup-port in this presidential contest with such blind loyalty when his Parliamentary colleagues were instructing him to rescue the country and the JLP from international embarrassment. Once again, Holness’s political immaturity emerges to show that he does not have the acumen to lead the JLP or Jamaica as prime minister.
It must be noted that Golding did not have him in mind on that fateful night when he re-signed on national television and radio as prime minister of Jamaica. In championing a youthful successor from the post-colonial polity rather than any of his older colleagues from Parlia-ment, it was Dr. Christopher Tufton, not Hol-ness, that Golding had in mind to succeed him at Jamaica House. Indeed, he had put the process in motion by his stunning decision in his Cabinet reshuffle, when he removed Samuda from the encompassing Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and replaced him with Tufton, who was doing a creditable job at the Ministry of Agriculture.
It was a bold political decision by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to drop Samuda from the Cabinet at a time when he was the general secretary of the JLP. It was an unprecedented decision in our political history. But Golding and Tufton were shellshocked when the wily Seaga stepped in and got his “pound of flesh” for the decades of treachery by someone he had groomed as his heir apparent. It was the culmi-nation of the perennial rivalry between Seaga and Golding.
History almost repeated itself in those excit-ing months. Jamaicans at home and abroad amost witnessed a repeat of the president of the opposition party not being a Member of Parlia-ment. Had Tufton been selected as prime minis-ter and JLP president, he might have suffered a similar fate on Dec. 29, 2011 as Norman Wash-ington Manley did in 1944. It must be borne in mind that in the first general election under adult suffrage to the House of Representatives, Man-ley lost by 395 votes to the JLP’s candidate, Ed-ward H. Fagan, an electrodermatologist. (See “Leadership Splits in PNP, JLP” by Troy Craine, The Sunday Gleaner, Sept. 29, 2013, p. F14.)
That is the bottom line.
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