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'Puss no business inna Dog War.'
John Maxwell
If Lisa Hanna had a modicum of political sense she would have withdrawn from the South-East St Ann fight for the PNP nomination. That she still has not, as I write three days after the battle erupted, shows that she is even less politically sensitive than I had imagined or that she is being incredibly badly advised.
This, despite the fact that Ms Hanna is an extremely intelligent woman with an a Master's in Communication. She is bound to lose this fight one way or another. If she survives to Nomination Day, which I doubt, she will not be elected to Parliament.
Former Prime Minister Patterson reveals himself as at least as politically maladroit as Ms Hanna - a raw beginner. His reputation for political savvy depends on the fact that he is the 'winningest' political leader in Jamaica's history - a reputation earned at the expense of the politically handicapped Edward Seaga. But PJ, when deputy prime minister, lost 'Slaveboy' Evans' seat in 1980 to a schoolteacher whose name is remembered by hardly anyone but me.
Last week, Mr Patterson made a bad situation worse by endorsing Ms Hanna against the wishes of her prospective constituents. This is a constituency that is probably the most politically activist and sophisticated in Jamaica. In contested elections, South-East St Ann has an unbroken PNP record since 1941, when Dr Ivan Lloyd was elected as MLC for the parish of St Ann in a bye-election before adult suffrage.
Dr Lloyd was beloved by his people, but when, on the verge of retirement, he wanted to impose his son on the constituency, the constituency rebelled and nominated Seymour Mullings instead. The son ran anyway for the JLP, and lost to Mullings.
I happen to have known Seymour Mullings since the age of eight when I went to Mrs Simpson's school, as one of her first pupils. Seymour lived just down the Claremont main road from Ferncourt, Mrs Simpson's house.
He was two years older than I and though we knew each other, we didn't really get to be good friends until we met later in high school (JC) where he was a good student, a very good cricketer and a soon-to-be world class jazz pianist. Later our friendship was cemented in the PNP - of which I became an elected executive member in 1964, before either Seymour or PJ Patterson or any other person now alive in this country.
Seymour, or 'Foggy' as he was nicknamed at school, was the ideal constituency representative. He knew everyone in the constituency, those who voted for him and the few who voted against. He was with them in their times of joy and sorrow, in the heat of the day and anytime they needed him. And he still found time to do his job as a land surveyor, as a vice president of the PNP and minister of agriculture and later, minister of finance.
So when 'Foggy' is revealed as not having been consulted about Ms Hanna's candidature and is taken aback by it, one knows that something has gone wrong in the PNP of which 'Foggy' was such a true and faithful member.
What is more, this lack of consultation reveals something else: a streak of wilfulness and arrogance in the leader of the party, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, someone I have respected and considered a friend for more than 30 years.
I confess I do not understand what has happened. I do know, however, that this contretemps will do extensive damage both to the PNP and to the reputation of the prime minister if it is not corrected soon.
I would hazard the guess that Mr Patterson's hand is deep in this mess. He seems unable to tear himself away from active participation in politics 40 years after his triumphal entrance as "Young, Gifted and Black" and the natural heir to the PNP leadership. Regrettably, his claims to be the protégé of Norman Manley, founder of the party, are not bolstered by his record, which has undone much of what Manley accomplished for Jamaica and for the PNP.
Manley's PNP was responsive to its constituents, and Norman Manley himself was available to any Jamaican. Mr Patterson operated in the shadows and could make the unchallenged claim that he was just like anyone else, to the point where, when PM, he could slip into a public occasion almost unrecognised.
It isn't that political leaders should be rock stars, but that leaders should be recognisable as leaders. This was not true of Mr Patterson.
I confessed in 1992 that I had never been a fan of Mr Patterson's - although we had known each other from school days at Calabar. But I was impressed at his inauguration when he promised openness and transparency in government, accountability and increased public participation. He has never fulfilled these promises, main among them his pledge to report his personal income annually so that the people would be able to track his record.
Although he was Jamaica's signature on the Treaty of Rio, Mr Patterson has done more than anyone else to make sustainable development in Jamaica a dead letter. And sustainable development is primarily about poverty eradication and not, as the Government's apologists would have it, about protecting lizards and snails - although they are part of it.
What PJ did was to introduce to Jamaica, government by stealth, in which major initiatives were suddenly sprung upon the population without our having any real opportunity to say whether we agreed with them or whether we thought they might be improved. The Doomsday Highway and Harmony Cove are classic examples.
Authoritarianism is a key part of the debacle in South-East St Ann. The prime minister, following in Patterson's footsteps, has decided that no one else has the right to decide. As a friend of Mrs Simpson Miller I cannot tell you the depth of my disappointment. I supported her cause not because she was a friend, nor because she was the outsider, but because I believed that her performance demonstrated that she respected the will of the people, that she would, as she said in her campaign, harvest the wisdom of the people.
That is precisely what the Treaty of Rio - Agenda 21 - depended on. Governments were to give their constituents the opportunity to produce their own local plans, they would become, for the first time at last, makers of their own destiny.
It was she, who as minister of local government, presided over the inauguration of Jamaica's first tentative move in that direction - the Portland Sustainable Local Development Planning initiative.
Now, she has told the oldest and most faithful PNP constituency that if they do not accept her high-handed decision, the party will blame them if the PNP loses the next election.
I have news for her: if the PNP loses the next election it will be Portia's head on the block. Her enemies within the PNP are salivating at the prospect.
What is so astonishing about the prime minister's decision is that it represents a subversion of her own personal position. The opposition to Portia Simpson Miller as leader of the party was from the gentry in the party, from middle-class 'brownings' who thought that black women should be seen and not heard, they should know their place and behave themselves.
That the prime minister, the girl from Wood Hall in St Catherine, should be seen to be presiding over the gentrification of the PNP is, for some PNP stalwarts, the last straw. That in this manoeuvre she is backed by the former prime minister, simply adds acid to the bitter gall.
Whose Development?
A few days ago, one of Jamaica's leading businessmen declared himself alarmed at the destruction of the Deeside forest in Trelawny, a favourite 'bird bush' of the hunting classes. The forest was being destroyed by charcoal burners and the birds were being driven away.
As Agenda 21 recognises, the main enemies of sustainable development are war and poverty.
In Jamaica we have both, and the environment is going to hell because of them.
The civil conflict in the 'inner cities' is a symptom of what used to be called the class war. Globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation have knocked the bread out of the mouths of thousands of Jamaicans.
The informal commercial importers (ICIs), the shoe polish and doughnut vendors, the robot taxi drivers, are all refugees from that struggle. The head of the Special Constabulary Force Association has shouted out what everybody knows - that the police are complicit in the racket in the seizure and impounding of motor vehicles. Corruption in the police is also financed by drug dealing, prostitution and other illegal activities.
Meanwhile, the daily newspapers are now waking up to the 40-year-old problem of police murder but we don't hear much about that from the police themselves, most of whom are, in fact, innocent. But innocence is questionable when there is knowledge that others are guilty. The presumption of innocence disappears completely when the 'innocent' are complicit in hiding and covering up for the guilty over a misplaced sense of esprit de corps - or should it be esprit de corpse?
The Government of Mr Patterson refused to address the fundamental problem of poverty eradication through sustainable development. In acquiescing to the worst horrors of globalisation - as in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) - the Government left our small traders, farmers and manufacturers wide open to the concentrated assault from imported food, fruit, clothing and shoes, to name a few. We are now importing peeled garlic cloves from China, along with everything else, and all we can think of to redress the balance is to wall off the seashore from Jamaicans by allowing irresponsible foreign investors to come in and uglify the country.
John Maxwell
If Lisa Hanna had a modicum of political sense she would have withdrawn from the South-East St Ann fight for the PNP nomination. That she still has not, as I write three days after the battle erupted, shows that she is even less politically sensitive than I had imagined or that she is being incredibly badly advised.
This, despite the fact that Ms Hanna is an extremely intelligent woman with an a Master's in Communication. She is bound to lose this fight one way or another. If she survives to Nomination Day, which I doubt, she will not be elected to Parliament.
Former Prime Minister Patterson reveals himself as at least as politically maladroit as Ms Hanna - a raw beginner. His reputation for political savvy depends on the fact that he is the 'winningest' political leader in Jamaica's history - a reputation earned at the expense of the politically handicapped Edward Seaga. But PJ, when deputy prime minister, lost 'Slaveboy' Evans' seat in 1980 to a schoolteacher whose name is remembered by hardly anyone but me.
Last week, Mr Patterson made a bad situation worse by endorsing Ms Hanna against the wishes of her prospective constituents. This is a constituency that is probably the most politically activist and sophisticated in Jamaica. In contested elections, South-East St Ann has an unbroken PNP record since 1941, when Dr Ivan Lloyd was elected as MLC for the parish of St Ann in a bye-election before adult suffrage.
Dr Lloyd was beloved by his people, but when, on the verge of retirement, he wanted to impose his son on the constituency, the constituency rebelled and nominated Seymour Mullings instead. The son ran anyway for the JLP, and lost to Mullings.
I happen to have known Seymour Mullings since the age of eight when I went to Mrs Simpson's school, as one of her first pupils. Seymour lived just down the Claremont main road from Ferncourt, Mrs Simpson's house.
He was two years older than I and though we knew each other, we didn't really get to be good friends until we met later in high school (JC) where he was a good student, a very good cricketer and a soon-to-be world class jazz pianist. Later our friendship was cemented in the PNP - of which I became an elected executive member in 1964, before either Seymour or PJ Patterson or any other person now alive in this country.
Seymour, or 'Foggy' as he was nicknamed at school, was the ideal constituency representative. He knew everyone in the constituency, those who voted for him and the few who voted against. He was with them in their times of joy and sorrow, in the heat of the day and anytime they needed him. And he still found time to do his job as a land surveyor, as a vice president of the PNP and minister of agriculture and later, minister of finance.
So when 'Foggy' is revealed as not having been consulted about Ms Hanna's candidature and is taken aback by it, one knows that something has gone wrong in the PNP of which 'Foggy' was such a true and faithful member.
What is more, this lack of consultation reveals something else: a streak of wilfulness and arrogance in the leader of the party, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, someone I have respected and considered a friend for more than 30 years.
I confess I do not understand what has happened. I do know, however, that this contretemps will do extensive damage both to the PNP and to the reputation of the prime minister if it is not corrected soon.
I would hazard the guess that Mr Patterson's hand is deep in this mess. He seems unable to tear himself away from active participation in politics 40 years after his triumphal entrance as "Young, Gifted and Black" and the natural heir to the PNP leadership. Regrettably, his claims to be the protégé of Norman Manley, founder of the party, are not bolstered by his record, which has undone much of what Manley accomplished for Jamaica and for the PNP.
Manley's PNP was responsive to its constituents, and Norman Manley himself was available to any Jamaican. Mr Patterson operated in the shadows and could make the unchallenged claim that he was just like anyone else, to the point where, when PM, he could slip into a public occasion almost unrecognised.
It isn't that political leaders should be rock stars, but that leaders should be recognisable as leaders. This was not true of Mr Patterson.
I confessed in 1992 that I had never been a fan of Mr Patterson's - although we had known each other from school days at Calabar. But I was impressed at his inauguration when he promised openness and transparency in government, accountability and increased public participation. He has never fulfilled these promises, main among them his pledge to report his personal income annually so that the people would be able to track his record.
Although he was Jamaica's signature on the Treaty of Rio, Mr Patterson has done more than anyone else to make sustainable development in Jamaica a dead letter. And sustainable development is primarily about poverty eradication and not, as the Government's apologists would have it, about protecting lizards and snails - although they are part of it.
What PJ did was to introduce to Jamaica, government by stealth, in which major initiatives were suddenly sprung upon the population without our having any real opportunity to say whether we agreed with them or whether we thought they might be improved. The Doomsday Highway and Harmony Cove are classic examples.
Authoritarianism is a key part of the debacle in South-East St Ann. The prime minister, following in Patterson's footsteps, has decided that no one else has the right to decide. As a friend of Mrs Simpson Miller I cannot tell you the depth of my disappointment. I supported her cause not because she was a friend, nor because she was the outsider, but because I believed that her performance demonstrated that she respected the will of the people, that she would, as she said in her campaign, harvest the wisdom of the people.
That is precisely what the Treaty of Rio - Agenda 21 - depended on. Governments were to give their constituents the opportunity to produce their own local plans, they would become, for the first time at last, makers of their own destiny.
It was she, who as minister of local government, presided over the inauguration of Jamaica's first tentative move in that direction - the Portland Sustainable Local Development Planning initiative.
Now, she has told the oldest and most faithful PNP constituency that if they do not accept her high-handed decision, the party will blame them if the PNP loses the next election.
I have news for her: if the PNP loses the next election it will be Portia's head on the block. Her enemies within the PNP are salivating at the prospect.
What is so astonishing about the prime minister's decision is that it represents a subversion of her own personal position. The opposition to Portia Simpson Miller as leader of the party was from the gentry in the party, from middle-class 'brownings' who thought that black women should be seen and not heard, they should know their place and behave themselves.
That the prime minister, the girl from Wood Hall in St Catherine, should be seen to be presiding over the gentrification of the PNP is, for some PNP stalwarts, the last straw. That in this manoeuvre she is backed by the former prime minister, simply adds acid to the bitter gall.
Whose Development?
A few days ago, one of Jamaica's leading businessmen declared himself alarmed at the destruction of the Deeside forest in Trelawny, a favourite 'bird bush' of the hunting classes. The forest was being destroyed by charcoal burners and the birds were being driven away.
As Agenda 21 recognises, the main enemies of sustainable development are war and poverty.
In Jamaica we have both, and the environment is going to hell because of them.
The civil conflict in the 'inner cities' is a symptom of what used to be called the class war. Globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation have knocked the bread out of the mouths of thousands of Jamaicans.
The informal commercial importers (ICIs), the shoe polish and doughnut vendors, the robot taxi drivers, are all refugees from that struggle. The head of the Special Constabulary Force Association has shouted out what everybody knows - that the police are complicit in the racket in the seizure and impounding of motor vehicles. Corruption in the police is also financed by drug dealing, prostitution and other illegal activities.
Meanwhile, the daily newspapers are now waking up to the 40-year-old problem of police murder but we don't hear much about that from the police themselves, most of whom are, in fact, innocent. But innocence is questionable when there is knowledge that others are guilty. The presumption of innocence disappears completely when the 'innocent' are complicit in hiding and covering up for the guilty over a misplaced sense of esprit de corps - or should it be esprit de corpse?
The Government of Mr Patterson refused to address the fundamental problem of poverty eradication through sustainable development. In acquiescing to the worst horrors of globalisation - as in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) - the Government left our small traders, farmers and manufacturers wide open to the concentrated assault from imported food, fruit, clothing and shoes, to name a few. We are now importing peeled garlic cloves from China, along with everything else, and all we can think of to redress the balance is to wall off the seashore from Jamaicans by allowing irresponsible foreign investors to come in and uglify the country.
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