Many of you who follow my blogs are probably of the view that I have a unhealthy fixation with what I refer to as the above cross Roads crowd and the other group from what the late Wilmott (Mutty) Perkins called the intellectual ghetto.
Let me be clear I have no quarrel with any particular institution of higher learning, I believe as President Barack Obama does that education is the best ticket out of poverty.
With that said, we also recognize just how dangerous one political ideology can be to a country when the highest institutions of intellectual thought is heavily invested in ideological indoctrination of those who seek education.
Jamaica has suffered immensely because of the very nature of the ideology which emanated out of the University of the West Indies in the 70’s ad 80’s to present day . Indisputably the criminal justice system has taken a tremendous beating because of the insanely liberal slant the politicians who came out of that Institution has foisted on the impressionable developing Island.
The judiciary and indeed the private bar from which many on the bench are farmed are largely and wholly shaped by the teachings and interpretations of the law imparted to them at the Norman Manley Law School.
That political ideology which nourished and nurtured crime, fomented hatred for the rule of law , and wrecked the Island’s economy was visible to me as a young man and was part of the reason I decided to find a way to reach my goals elsewhere.
The gathering storm of economic decay , poverty and crime which should have been obvious to everyone was ignored as Jamaicans inexorably allowed themselves to recklessly indulge in the fallacy of leftist ideology which began in the 70’s transforming the once burgeoning economy into a dependent basket-case.
Ironically, as part of the post mortem following the latest loss some members of the opposition party have spoken quite candidly about what the party has been to the country. Some have spoken truthfully that the party’s hierarchy used the Jamaican people to enrich themselves. To get and keep political power. Some argued the party strayed from it’s socialist roots.
Those who believe the party has strayed too far from it’s roots continue to be like blind and deaf monkeys ‚hear no evil see no evil. All across the globe the decaying citadels of communism/socialism has come crashing down with even the initial architects of Marxism/Leninism eschewing that ideology and latching onto the freight train which is a free market system of government.
Those who blame the loss on the notion the party strayed too far from it’s socialist roots are stuck in a time-warp of clenched fists “comrade associates ” and stupidly outdated berets.
For those the needs and aspirations of a younger generation who yearn to do for themselves through entrepreneurship, science , technology and code-writing is completely lost.
For those dinosaurs the lure, appeal, impression and possibilities of the internet and social media are as distant as night and day.
For them the unmitigated free-spirit of a younger generation wanting to do for themselves rather than subject themselves to the confining limits of government largess is indiscernible.
The comments of former justice minister Mark Golding did not escape me as he sought to justify his street creds, beef up his bona-fides to represent the mother of all PNP garrisons Arnett Gardens . A community in which each election cycle the number of electors who vote for the PNP alone, far exceed the number of people living withing that enclave.
A community which has operated as a fiefdom separate from the Jamaican state.
This is the community which the Oxford educated uptown son of privilege want to represent as he jockey to edge out Colin Campbell the epitome of Garrison politics.
This is the very type of community Golding’s education and exposure should cause him to be revolted by. The type of community in which the state’s power is supplanted by party and underworld Don rule . A community in which the forces of law and order comes from un-elected, un-appointed criminal underworld figures who exact their own brand of justice. This is the system the former justice minister is jockeying to head.
Golding asked of himself in relation to a media question.
“Can I handle the ‘Donman’ thing?”
“It’s important that the constituency be run for the benefit of all constituents and all parts of the constituency must feel that they have effective representation, and the system by which patronage is dispensed through one or two individuals who control a particular community is not one which I think is democratic or which empowers people. It’s one that the people of South St Andrew want to move away from,”.
“I am a fortunate person. I was born to family that was relatively well off in the context of Jamaica,”
“I have benefited from excellent education and all of that. In terms of my experience growing up, I grew up on campus (University of the West Indies, Mona) in the 1970s. My neighbours were people like (Professor of Economics) George Beckford and other so-called radicals of the era. I was friends with their children — we are still friends, we have a campus kids fraternity or group that we stay in touch — and progressive ideas I was exposed to throughout my upbringing,”.
Yes of course, a Campus which also had Trevor Monroe and his Worker’s Party of Jamaica and a slew of other misguided radical ideologues who had grandiose thoughts of revolution influencing our nations direction. Look how well that turned out.[sic]
As I have consistently said, our country missed a tremendous opportunity to be great when we rolled over without fighting and allowed leftist ideology by half baked idiots to permeate our civic and political discourse without fighting back.
Today literally every country which adopted that regressive way of thinking has suffered extraordinary economic and cultural decay the latest being Venezuela.
Unfortunately those who are the most responsible for that social engineering still wax nostalgic in the pungent stench of it’s abject failures.
The likes of Mark Golding and others who were born with golden spoons in their mouths have contributed to those failures yet today they still line up to have another go at political trough, only this time there is a little less of the ideological bull-shit, just more of the same ald style garrison politics
That should not be allowed any longer , the Jamaican people should wake up and tell them where to go.