ELECTIONS ARE OVER :NOW LET’S BUILD.

The much hyped race for lead­er­ship of the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) has end­ed with a whop­ping del­e­gate major­i­ty of 692 votes for Andrew Holness . Holness retained his Party’s lead­er­ship over Audley Shaw the mem­ber of Parliament with port­fo­lio for Finance. Final vote tal­ly accord­ing to the Jamaican Papers was Holness 2’702 Shaw 2’012. Many in the Jamaica Labor Party as well as observers on the out­side felt the lead­er­ship race was a bad thing for the JLP. I dis­agreed, the idea of a chal­lenge to the select­ed leader of the JLP was not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing Laborites are used to. In fact it has been anti­thet­i­cal to the JLP and may actu­al­ly be part of the rea­son that par­ty only held office for 12 of the last 40 years.

Audley Shaw

As is to be expect­ed most of the mem­bers who sup­port­ed mis­ter Shaw’s can­di­da­cy for lead­er­ship of the par­ty have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions to mis­ter Holness. This is com­mon pro­to­col in cas­es such as these. The expla­na­tion is that, it gives the leader the oppor­tu­ni­ty to select a team he/​she has con­fi­dence in. This is how­ev­er a momen­tous occa­sion for Andrew Holness to ask mis­ter Shaw and those who sup­port­ed him who would like to stay on , to remain and help to rebuild and make the par­ty stronger. Magnanimity is a virtue he can ill-afford not to use. It is imper­a­tive that Mister Holness stand true to his words that he was unafraid of a chal­lenge. Real lead­ers are not per­turbed by chal­lenges, they are a tes­ta­ment to one’s own strength and sup­port structure.

Now that mis­ter Shaw and his acolytes have had their say it is incum­bent that if asked, they fall in line and sub­ject them­selves to the author­i­ty of the new­ly elect­ed Andrew Holness and the direc­tion in which he wants to take the coun­try. At the start of this exer­cise I qui­et­ly told a few friends that even though I am not opposed to Audley Shaw, I was hop­ing for a Holness win . I believe the del­e­gates have sent a strong mes­sage , which rein­forces that one does not have to dumb down to be a leader. One does not have to resort to so called (ray ray) [sic]to com­pete in Jamaican pol­i­tics. I believe that the labor par­ty’s del­e­gates have wittingly/​or unwit­ting­ly made the right deci­sion for their par­ty and for Jamaica. I asked one senior Jamaican how he felt about the race between the two men he rather quick­ly told me that Audley Shaw could­n’t even run the gas sta­tion he owned , how could any­one expect him to run a country.

He went on to tell me that Shaw ran a petrol sta­tion he owned into the ground.(no inde­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion to the verac­i­ty of this claim). I won­dered aloud to him whether this placed any real ques­tion mark against mis­ter Shaw’s abil­i­ty to lead the coun­try? My friend forth­right­ly asked me whether I believed Portia did not know this and would use it to clob­ber Shaw. The icing on the cake of that con­ver­sa­tion was when he asked me why did Bruce Golding bring Don Wedhy from the pri­vate sec­tor to under­study Shaw when he appoint­ed him min­is­ter of finance?

I believe both men and their dif­fer­ent camps need to now come togeth­er and for the good of the coun­try chart a path for­ward that the nation can grav­i­tate toward. It is an exis­ten­tial need that they do so and get it right for the good of the coun­try. PS I was not sur­prised that Delroy Chuck has inti­mat­ed to Andrew Holness that he does not wish to be con­sid­ered for any post in a new shad­ow cab­i­net. That should be rather good for Andrew Holness, Delroy Chuck should sim­ply go over to the PNP.