OF GARRISONS CONCESSIONS AND DEBATES

I want to bring a cou­ple of thoughts to the atten­tion of Jamaicans and oth­ers who have an inter­est in whats going on in our country.

THE QUESTION OF THE GARRISON MARCH

Gleaner pho­to

The first is the offer Prime Minister Holness has made to the leader of the Opposition Portia Simpson Miller to walk in some com­mu­ni­ties char­ac­ter­ized as gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties or zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions. There has been many and var­ied opin­ions on whether this pro­posed sym­bol­ic ges­ture will accom­plish any­thing. Some have argued that time has passed and what is need­ed now is con­crete action. Those are legit­i­mate arguments,but are not argu­ments that negates the pos­i­tive out­come for the coun­try that would emanate from peo­ple liv­ing in the inner cities and all over Jamaica to see the top two polit­i­cal lead­ers walk­ing and talk­ing as friends. Some have argued that Bob Marley brought Manley and Seaga togeth­er yet polar­iza­tion per­sists, what they fail to under­stand or acknowl­edge is that events would have poten­tial­ly been vast­ly dif­fer­ent and many more lives lost had that event not occurred. We are not going to try to nuance that to death what we will say is that if it does­n’t hurt whats the prob­lem in doing it for the coun­try? To date Mrs. Simpson Miller has not seen fit to engage this new Prime Minister in the hand of fel­low­ship that he extend­ed to her, choos­ing to attach a bunch of pre­req­ui­sites before her par­tic­i­pa­tion in any march.

PORTIA’S NON CONCESSION TO BRUCE

Bruce Golding

Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding lashed out at Portia Simpson Miller at the JLP con­fer­ence at the National Arena on Sunday November 20^th. In an address Golding lashed Miller for what he char­ac­ter­ized as a breach of pro­to­cols estab­lished by all for­mer Prime Ministers gone before in call­ing the win­ner and con­ced­ing defeat when they lost .Golding went on to say that the media had grown impa­tient with him not arriv­ing at the Belmont Road Head quar­ters of the JLP on the night he won the elec­tion. he stat­ed he held back from going to Belmont Road as the nor­mal con­ces­sion phone call did not come from Mrs. Simpson Miller.

Mrs. Miller for her part shot back that she had always treat­ed Mister Golding with respect through­out his time as Prime Minister , and empha­sized that she even attend­ed his inau­gu­ra­tion. She stat­ed that because of the close­ness of the race and oth­er issues which she intend­ed to address in the courts she decid­ed not to concede.

Portia Simpson Miller

Supporters of Mrs Miller con­tend this is sour grapes on the part of Golding, and that this is in the past. Is it

On the night after she lost the elec­tions Portia Simpson Miller in a rather bel­li­cose and bel­liger­ent speech stat­ed that she would con­cede noth­ing to the labour par­ty and that she would be their worst night­mare. Presumably Mrs Miller was refer­ring to the dual cit­i­zen­ship issue with three of the JLP’ can­di­dates which was an issue as far as the con­sti­tu­tion of the coun­try is con­cerned. Jamaica’s con­sti­tu­tion clear­ly states that any­one hav­ing alle­giance to a for­eign pow­er can­not sit in Parliament. The PNP which Miller heads also had can­di­dates that had dual cit­i­zen­ship. Mrs Millers argu­ments are legit­i­mate but did not pre­clude her from con­ced­ing to the Prime Minister elect whilst let­ting him know that she intend­ed to see the mat­ter through in court.

In fact con­ced­ing vic­to­ry in no way takes away her right to chal­lenge the results of the elec­tion in a court of law,neither does it pre­vent her from receiv­ing her just redress should a court find in her favor. The fact is it was a bad deci­sion ‚one which I am sure Portia regretted.

POLITICAL DEBATES

There is still sub­stan­tial squab­bling going on about the for­mat of debates by the can­di­dates, or even whether there should be any debates at all. The new­ly installed Prime Minister has indi­cat­ed his will­ing­ness to debate the leader of the oppo­si­tion before a nation­al tele­vised audi­ence. Now grant­ed there is no law that dic­tates that can­di­dates seek­ing the high­est elect­ed office in the coun­try should debate. It should not be a prob­lem for any­one want­i­ng to lead the coun­try to let peo­ple know how they will han­dle the job. Detractors of the debate that every­one seek­ing a job has to inter­view for that job , some­times doing two or there inter­views in the process before being seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered for that posi­tion. What makes politi­cians any dif­fer­ent? no won­der when they are elect­ed they believe the laws do not apply to them.

From all indi­ca­tions Mrs Miller would like a debate where she is a part of a team of can­di­dates where she can be shield­ed by her col­leagues, the leader of the coun­try must be smart and assertive he/​she will have no cov­er in seri­ous inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions, Portia must debate the issues one and one with Andrew Holness and let the chips fall where they may, she does not get to say what she will or will not do.

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