Golding wants to emulate dad’s contribution to nation

WESTERN BUREAU:

Like his father, Sir John Golding, who made his mark as an orthopaedic surgeon, Opposition Leader Mark Golding, who is spearheading the People’s National Party’s (PNP) bid to remove the Dr Andrew Holness-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) from power, says he, too, wants to make an indelible mark on the nation.

Should the PNP succeed in defeating the JLP in the impending general election and form the next government, as the leader of the party, Golding will become Jamaica’s 10th prime minister and the fourth from the PNP. The party has produced prime ministers in Michael Manley, PJ Patterson, and Portia Simpson-Miller.

Golding, who took the reins of the PNP in November 2020, following the party’s crushing defeat in the general election in September of that year, has been on a relentless mission to rebuild the organisation amid the criticisms of individuals who have questioned his political savvy and his Jamaican roots.

While addressing a PNP divisional conference in Westmoreland Eastern last Thursday, Golding stood firm on his Jamaica roots, tracing back to basic school.

“I went to a basic school named Gousis Gander on Liguanea Avenue. James Robertson’s (the JLP member of parliament for St Thomas Western) sister and I went to that school together. You can ask her. Her name is Corah Ann Robertson-Sylvester,” said Golding.

In fact, Golding noted that aside from the time he spent overseas pursuing his legal studies, his life and career have been firmly planted in Jamaica.

JAMAICAN BY BIRTH

“My father came here to serve, and I have followed in that path. I am Jamaican by birth, by upbringing, and by deep love for this country,” he declared, dismissing the political attacks questioning his citizenship as divisive and unproductive.

“They [JLP] have some bad-minded reasoning, some little racist reasoning they are going on with. But Markie G was born here and never left here,” said Golding. “So all of them who want to engage in that type of dirty politics, all I can tell you is that it is a road and a journey that is going down to nowhere because that is not uplifting anybody and that is not persuading or convincing anybody.”

While the JLP, as a party, has not publicly raised Golding’s skin colour as an issue in any substantive way, it has accused him of being a British citizen and holding a British passport.

However, one member of the party has not been subtle in playing the race card despite taking much heat for it.

While addressing a JLP rally in 2022, Everald Warmington, the JLP member of parliament for St Catherine North Eastern, suggested that Golding’s ancestral background made him unfit to become prime minister of Jamaica.

“Weh Mark Golding mother and father come from? If him want to become prime minister, go back a England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland,” Warmington said.

However, in divorcing the JLP from the comment during a subsequent party conference, JLP General Secretary Dr Horace Chang described Warmington’s comments as “unfortunate” and that the party embraced people of all races.

“The comment is a political one because I think Mr Warmington was responding to some comments that have been made before. It is an unfortunate comment, but there is no ethnic division in Jamaica in the political arena,” said Chang.

While many influential organisations called for Warmington to apologise for the statement and retract it, some JLP supporters urged him not to so do, arguing that the PNP, in another dispensation, had done the same thing to former Prime Minister Edward Seaga. Seaga was born in the United States, and his Caucasian features were frequently referenced in attempts by opponents to suggest that his allegiance to Jamaica was in doubt and to attempt to disqualify him as a suitable candidate to lead the nation.

editorial@gleanerjm.com