ROPER’S PERSPECTIVE
BY GARNETT ROPER

It is becoming clear that the outcomes we want and the processes we have in Jamaica are working at cross-purposes. The motion to extend the state of emergency for a third month consecutively, was defeated because there were insufficient Government members in the Parliament to support the motion brought by the same Government. So the Government brought the motion, but its members did not come to the Parliament in sufficient numbers to ensure the minimum number was present for the 31 votes to carry the motion. The previous two times that numbers were necessary to pass a motion or defeat a motion, the JLP members of the Houses of Parliament were there in numbers and in full voice but this time it was not thought important enough. When the PNP brought the censure motion against Prime Minister Bruce Golding for his having lied to the Parliament, all 32 elected members were present except for Shahine Robinson, who was temporarily relieved by the court of the right to sit in the Parliament.

When in the Senate, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General Dorothy Lightbourne faced a censure motion, the JLP Senate ensured that they were present and voted to protect her from her own action or inaction. However, on this occasion at the last sitting of Parliament of Tuesday July 20, 2010, when the matter did not concern the political skin of one of their own but the national security of Jamaica, a number of their members were on an expensive joy ride in China (a la the NDM).

Vitriol

The moment news broke of the failure of Government members to turn up and support their state of emergency the G2K, the JLP’s tracing machine, issued a statement of pure vitriol blaming the PNP for abstaining and thus allowing the motion to be defeated. Public political discourse is interestingly positioned: the PNP has been voted out of power for three years now, but significant sections of the chattering classes believe it is the duty of the PNP to grandfather the JLP in office. Some of those who feel they went too far out on a limb in criticizing Golding in the extradition matter want to sanitize themselves and ingratiate themselves to administration by making outlandish charges against the PNP.

There have even been those who contend that the PNP in failing to attend a CARICOM conference, boycotted by a majority of prime ministers from the region, had done damage to Jamaica’s good name tantamount to the Dudusgate. I searched my memory to remember a single instance when the JLP as political opposition attended a CARICOM event.

No doubt those same voices will find a way to lay blame at the feet of the PNP for not bailing out the Golding administration by coming to their rescue with the six votes needed to carry the resolution to extend the state of emergency to Clarendon and for another 30 days. That, however, would be to miss the point, and also to miss the real lesson in all of this: The real lesson is that Jamaica at this time, and possibly at this stage of its development, lacks the process to secure the outcomes it desires.

Bruce Golding and the ethos of his administration demonstrate this lack amply. It is clear that the JLP does not understand the political compromise. Watching the members at work with a democracy and with democratic traditions and institutions is like watching a bulldozer trying to build a garden. They are misfits. Rantings of desperation On the weekend in Montego Bay the words echoed by the PM on the stage of a political rally were the rantings of desperation.

He was demanding that the society shut up and move on because he had no intention to be further distracted as he puts it, but his duty to answer questions in a matter about which he ought to have been censured and for which he feigned an apology.

Bruce Golding has no intention of answering questions in the Manatt, Phelps & Phipps matter that refuses to go away. He had indicated that U$50,000 was paid by the JLP, now Manatt is saying a further U$15,000 was in fact paid. Bruce Golding joins his Cabinet colleague Daryl Vaz in his contempt for public opinion. We know that there is no further explanation except that the PM lied even in his confession and has no intention to declaring the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

What might have saved the day and inured to the extension of the state of emergency for another 30 days and to another parish was compromise. Compromise requires trust and the willingness to make trade-offs. Democratic processes that allow for compromise and trade off depend on trust and honour. It is the value of trust and honour that is lost on the members of the Bruce Golding administration.

They have squandered their political and social capital and they do not know how to approach a negotiation. Their spindoctors could make excuses until the cows come home, this is the real story. If the Golding administration were not so mired in arrogance and if it had not squandered its social and political capital we could have moved forward in a direction to the benefit of Jamaica.

It is to the enormous credit of the PNP that it sought to save the day by offering an olive branch and an escape clause. The PNP offered the Government its support for 15 days conditioned on the Government providing the required briefing and information during the 15 days. It also indicated that it would be prepared to support a resolution for a further 15 days if the information provided gave justification for such extension.

The Bruce Golding administration does not know the value of compromise and so it walked away from the offer to choose a zero sum game. It is our way or the highway. In the worst days of the Michael Manley conflict, of “overthrow and under-throw,” Manley and Seaga would have found a way. Bruce Golding does not rise to that stature.

It is not that I believe that the state of emergency, as it has been utilized over the last 60 days, is in Jamaica’s best interest. I believe that the precipitous decline in the rate of homicide is directly related to the assault on Tivoli from which crime in Jamaica was directed and controlled. The state of emergency has not been extended to St James, yet there was a 48 per cent decrease in murders in St James during the month of June, the first month of the imposition of the State of Emergency.

Vybz Kartel’s release I believe the behaviour by Minister of National Security Dwight Nelson in ordering the release of DJ Vybz Kartel and Dudus’s sister from detention so that he could perform at Sumfest smacks of an abuse of some process.

This is especially the case because it was in response to the request of a party insider.

Further, something is wrong with the detention of hundreds of Jamaica young males (including Vybz Kartel) for weeks at a time without any charges being proffered against them.

Finally, I do not believe that the current situation in Jamaica does not warrant an extension of the state of emergency. Dudus is safely ensconced at the pleasure of the US State Department and the barricades are down.

However, the transition to life after the state of emergency ought to have been more planned and smoother.

The saddest thing of all about how things are unfolding is that the current crop of political leadership are completely indifferent to the impact of their actions on the future of this country. There would be life after Bruce Golding: it means somebody would have to clean up this mess.