THIS IS REALLY WHAT’S AT STAKE

It’s the sil­ly sea­son in Jamaica. Once again Jamaicans allow them­selves to be whipped into a fren­zy in sup­port of one of the two polit­i­cal gangs that take turns ruin­ing .… I mean run­ning Jamaica. This hap­pens every four or five years despite protes­ta­tions from many that they do not see nei­ther the win­ners or losers in their com­mu­ni­ties after the elec­tions untill the next cycle comes around. So the sto­ries have start­ed com­ing in about the ston­ing of busses filled with peo­ple on their way home from a meet­ing held in Mandeville Manchester called to announce the date of the elec­tions. There are also reports of one man being shot and killed after that same meet­ing, I mean, seri­ous­ly people?

The Jamaican Dollar fluc­tu­ates some­where between 83 – 85 to one US$ this means the dol­lar is real­ly worth­less, even in Jamaica traders and ped­dlers ask for US dol­lar in pay­ment for goods and ser­vices, infla­tion has dri­ven the price of food and oth­er con­sumer goods through the roof, crime cor­rup­tion and ter­ror are rampant.These are just some of the issues plagu­ing our once beau­ti­ful par­adise. Many argue they don’t care what’s going on Jamaica is nice, and I con­cur of course our coun­try the beau­ti­ful land of wood and water is just as beau­ti­ful, if of course one choos­es to ignore the fact that too many of our trees has been cut down so we have small­er rivers and streams as a result of less rain­fall when com­pared to three decades ago , but I digress.

It is not the coun­try it’s always the people.

The Observer Editorial of today Tuesday December 20^th prais­es RJR for not air­ing the JLP’s adver­tise­ment show­ing Portia Simpson Miller rant­i­ng and rav­ing about not being afraid of quote “no bwoy, nu gal, nowhere” .

RJR right to sus­pend Portia trac­ing ad.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com.

In his Editorial the writer went to pains to try to absolve Portia of respon­si­bil­i­ty for the words com­ing from her very lips.

These com­ments were not untrue quotes assigned to her mali­cious­ly, they were not doc­tored and damn sure are not incor­rect , yet this opin­ion shaper went to lengths to con­vince vot­ers that quote ” The peo­ple will judge Mrs Simpson Miller as to her char­ac­ter, as they did in 2007. The JLP needs to have a lit­tle more faith in the good sense of the Jamaican vot­er. What a load of crock the actions of chil­dren from as far back as grade school now forms part of that child’s per­ma­nent record, it deter­mines what high school or col­lege that child is accept­ed into , it deter­mines what that child will be when he/​she grows up , yet some­how the words and actions of Portia Simpson should be ignored and cov­ered up. Portia Simpson Miller has allowed the ghet­to to shape her as much as any­thing else, as a young detec­tive I observed her in front of the Whitehall Avenue school roll and bawl in the mid­dle of the streets because her red ban­dan­na wear­ing thugs were not allowed to steal bal­lot box­es from the school, nev­er mind that her con­stituen­cy is bor­der­ing Spanish Town Road, and White Hall Avenue is in Saint Andrew North. Whatever we do in life fol­lows us for the rest of our lives Simpson Miller is no excep­tion. Gary Allen and oth­ers are noth­ing more than lit­tle Gods in their lit­tle ponds in Jamaica , small fish in their lit­tle holes mak­ing deci­sions of what peo­ple are allowed to hear and what they aren’t allowed to hear , for­tu­nate­ly there are choic­es now , peo­ple do not have to lis­ten to RJR now do they?