It should not be too difficult to accept the mundane proposition that the efficient running of any organisation depends on the health of its leaders at any given time.

The proposition becomes more obvious when a leader gets sick and cannot carry out effectively the functions of the office with which he or she has been entrusted.

There are all kinds of consequences, intended and unintended, that can arise from this if the person continues to hold on tenaciously as if for dear life.

There are people who seem to believe that organisations cannot outlast them; that without them holding up the columns of the organisation it can only but wither and die.

The opposite is often the case, for organisations do outlast the perforated self-importance and even narcissism of the leader who thinks that he or she is God’s gift to the human race.

They perish like others before them, and their graves often become the resting place of goats who wander into the untended cemetery in which they are buried.

You cannot help but admire those who are conscious of their mortality and know when it is time to move on for the good of the organisation, institution or group.

Such a person was Michael Manley, and to a lesser extent P J Patterson (there was no suggestion of illness when he departed the political scene).

Outside of the obvious frailties of the mind and body, which can define the extent of a person’s incapacitation, it is the leader who has to determine that it is time for him or her to go.

It is the opinion of an increasing number of Jamaicans who take the time to be concerned about such matters, that Portia Simpson Miller has reached this stage in her political career as president of the People’s National Party (PNP). Concerns have been raised about her health and her ability to continue to lead the PNP.

She has not spoken in any robust fashion about the details of her health to allay people’s fears one way or the other. Dr Karl Blythe, a medical doctor, and her only contender for the presidency of the party yesterday, indelicately and foolishly found himself in the camp of armchair doctors by deigning to comment on her health “from a distance”.

Blythe has since apologised for this folly, but he should not have allowed himself, as a seasoned doctor, to break the cardinal rule of commenting on a patient with whom, to the best of one’s knowledge, he has not had a medical relationship.

Simpson Miller projects herself to be physically fit. And whether this is for stagecraft, or is actually what it is, one has to wonder what good will hanging on as leader of the party do for her, the party, and the country. I am not a prophet in the order of the foretellers, but it should be quite obvious to her that it is inconceivable — against all matrixes — that she will ever again occupy Jamaica House. And if by some divine fiat she should, it should be quite clear to her — and those who really mean her well — that her best days are behind her.

And the strains of office and the wear over the years are beginning to tell. In her public statements she does not seem a happy woman. This unhappiness seems exacerbated by the financial scandals that now confront the PNP in which the Office of the Contractor General and the Major Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Agency (MOCA) have now taken more than a passing interest. Whenever she speaks nowadays she presents a quarrelsome demeanour, even telling her detractors in the party not to test her as they do not know where she is coming from, and that she is a “dangerous” person who is not to be trifled with. She will put her foot down.

May God help the person who feels the full impact of her heels! And this is not to wish anything but the best for her. I have written before that some of us who criticise Simpson Miller’s hanging on to the party may mean her better than the assorted soothsayers who hang on to her skirt tail, whisper tantalising and deceptive thoughts into her ears, and who are perhaps driven by the thought that they have no future in politics other than that which is guaranteed by her longevity at the party’s helm.

They must in all humility step back from the political braggadocio and allow her the space to make her decision in a timely manner. The matter of her health is one for her own decision, and she has to look within herself and determine whether it is worth it to continue on her present trajectory or change course to a more fulfilling life in retirement.

She must be allowed to do this with much respect, and one is sure that when the time comes she will make the right decision But political power is a very seductive force.

It sends out its tentacles and pulls you into itself. It disfigures the best of us and causes decisions to be made that are not consistent with that which is reasonable and appropriate.

Those given to dictatorial proclivities from Caligula in Rome to Hitler in Germany, and the assorted mini despots that have arisen in the world since World War II, are overtaken by the baser and more insane elements of political power.

They eventually wreck their own lives and property, and the lives of those over whom they preside by some semblance of divine right and privilege. Such leaders have been cancers on the world’s body politic.

We are at a critical juncture in our country where nothing but the most robust, transparent and accountable leadership can get us out of the quagmire in which the country is mired. Corruption stalks the land like a hydra-headed monster on rampage.

The confidence of citizens in the future of the country is at an all-time low because people have become distrustful of leadership across the whole gamut of the society.

Jamaica is still a young democracy by any standard or definition, and we can and must turn the country around for good. We can begin by each citizen becoming aware of his stake as a stakeholder in the country. But the haunting question is: Who are we as Jamaicans?

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest and social commentator. Send comments to the Observer or stead6655@aol. com.