Mark Wignall | When democracy slips away

The present White House led by Donald Trump is devouring democracy and doing it with glee and much haste. Here in Jamaica we gave it our special birth, our special nurturing and when it veered off track we developed the skill and patience to pull it back to the centre.

I would never swear that the head of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Andrew Holness, has as his favourite person, Mark Golding, People’s National Party (PNP) president. To me that would be tragic. Something would be out of political whack for Holness and Golding to be meeting every weekend for drinks and chat.

In the post-election period, I expect both leaders to situate themselves within their own spaces where Golding can consistently tear away at Holness and pretend he is assisting the government in nation-building. At the same time PM Holness needs as little of Golding as politically possible. To the JLP and Holness, Golding is not a useful political feature for the moment and maybe for all of next year.

Many Jamaicans are concerned about the state of affairs in America because so many of our relatives live and work there. We are especially concerned because it seems that the head cook and, in his mind, the maker of laws, Donald Trump, is not quite compos mentis. His recent rambling at the United Nations General Assembly was the perfect example of his mental state of affairs.

We shouldn’t pretend that at any moment we might not run the risk of the US State Department directing Jamaica government’s directions and derailing our long-term plans. All it takes is a metal glitch from Trump and we are in the cross hairs of bad policy via Truth Social.

MPs AND THE EXIT SIGN

Well known PNP supporters especially those who call me friend have always found that I harbour no animosity when they harshly criticise those in the JLP who call me friend. I happen to like Bobby Montague and Horace Chang and at times, Delroy Chuck.

And yet those are among some of the recent appointees to the Holness cabinet. In the 1990s quite a few influential JLP personnel which came to be known as the Young Turks decide that it was time for the JLP to ditch Seaga and force Bruce Golding to occupy a gilded throne, whether he wanted it or not.

On the day that Seaga folded and handed in his letter of resignation the Young Turks got together to celebrate. I was with them. Who else was there?

James Robertson, Daryl Vaz, Bobby Montague, Everald Warmington (and his poor manners) and Bruce Golding, among many more. What sticks out in my mind in that period is the fact that at no time was Golding comfortable in leading the JLP.

One Young Turk who saw Bruce Golding as the right man for the right time and more so the only man available said to me, “He is going to sit on that throne even if we have to push him back in it. He has little choice.”

One of the painful realities of political leadership and succession is that the leader knows that in planning leadership succession, often he has to unceremoniously dump some of those who initially lifted him to that very lofty spot.

PM Holness is at that place now where he feels politically secure to call a cabinet member and say to him, ‘It was good while it lasted. I’m going to ask you to take a step back. As you and I have said all along, the party is bigger than all of us. Let us sip these beers.’

IF MARK GOLDING STEPPED BACK

Peter Bunting and, who knows, Dayton Campbell would have leadership ambitions. I have heard PNP bloggers speaking of Ian Hayles as also on that track. And, why not? He is smart and resourceful?

And of course there is never talk of PNP leadership without the mention of Damion Crawford. Crawford is no less bright than anyone else in the PNP. I see Crawford as a disruptor before he reaches to leadership quality. He is much too likely to go off on adventures of his own while forcing the party to clean up his words after the fact.

It seems to me that while the JLP has a sweet stock of oldies and some who have simply grown stale if not old, Andrew also has youngsters who are ready to assume the leadership ranks of the party.

Golding, as I said in a previous column, has never been known as much as he would have preferred. The big negative troubling him is that those others in the PNP whose leadership ambitions are worn on their sleeves are more disliked than not known.

So, the PNP has the tougher trip to make the dash into that leadership tape.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.