One assumes that when a man walks around and calls himself "minister", and especially if he is so inclined to be attracted to women, and he would want them to be attracted to him, in turn he would want to be considered as one who is lauded and one who has class.

That, of course, is just the basics. What a man does in his professional life has a lot to do with what he thinks about himself and how he perceives others think about him.

If he is a minister of government, even just a junior one - possibly because those who had the power to name him "junior" or full minister, gave him the lesser designation in keeping with his many limitations - his entire life in politics may be one where he wears a badge like a coiled-up spring waiting to burst out and prove to all that he is in fact an "overzealous idiot".

Junior Minister Everald Warmington made a spectacle of himself recently when, in the face of allegations concerning him and a company which is close to him, he spoke about the Office of the Contractor General and said that the contractor general was an "overzealous idiot".

Warmington really cannot help it.

On a day in 2005 a few of the young Turks in the JLP called me on a conference call to announce that Eddie Seaga, the man who had hobbled the JLP since 1989, had resigned. They were having a party, and according to them, my presence was desired.

I was, after all, the person who had chosen to never let up on what I saw as Eddie Seaga's stranglehold of the JLP and his belief that the Jamaican people would once again see him as the god he was made out to be in 1980 when he led the JLP to the biggest election victory in Jamaica's history.

At the gathering in Jacks Hills were all of the young Turks, like Bobby Montague, Daryl Vaz, James Robertson, Tom Tavares-Finson, Don Creary and others, plus a man named Bruce Golding. As I arrived I saw a journalist seated. He hailed me and as I walked across to him he was in the process of handing me a copy of Eddie Seaga's resignation letter when a very rude man, a man I had never seen before, just grabbed it out of his hand, turned to me and snarled, "Gimme dis!"

That man was Everald Warmington.

A few weeks before that I had written a column about him which could have been considered uncomplimentary. To me, that was the main reason he grabbed the letter away.

From then I realised the kind of man he was.

Any sensible politician in the ruling JLP or the Opposition PNP must know that Greg Christie, the head of the Office of the Contractor General, in fact, the contractor general, is the absolute best that this country has produced as a public servant.

In the 1970s Ted Ogilvie as the PS in the Housing Ministry was an honest man doing what all honest men do. Simply doing his work while investigating wrongdoings taking place in the McGregor Gully project. In the 1970s, corruption was rampant in Jamaica and there were no checks and balances as we have now under the brave, professional face of Greg Christie.

Ted Ogilvie went home for lunch one day and as he left to go back to work he was shot dead at his gate by well-known PNP gunmen. Those gunmen ran away to Cuba when the JLP won the election in 1980. They eventually returned home in the late 1990s, faced the courts and were freed because no witnesses showed up.

The PNP, under Michael Manley, did nothing about it.

That they still live among us is reason to call this society sick. Reneto Adams should have a "talk" with them.

Greg Christie as contractor general is facing threats daily, like another sterling public servant, Danville Walker in Customs. When "overzealous idiots" like Warmington call out the contractor general because early findings from the CG indicate allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Warmington and contracts which were said to be given to an entity connected to him, it says to every other idiot that Christie is fair game.

In the book My Bad by Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin, it is said, "To err is human, to err in public humiliating." Mr Warmington has apologised and we are now expected to accept it.

The book My Bad explains it better than I could. "Any misdeed, no matter how egregious, can now be immediately negated by a bleat of casual contrition. Got a crack habit? Oops, sorry... Didn't mean it. Caught with a woman not your wife? My Bad."

This is not the first time that Warmington has flown off the handle. One assumes that his "rawchaw" behaviour has nothing to do with his being cousin to Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller. Indeed, it was thought a few years ago when the newly elected JLP was in more than a spot of bother that Warmington would be one to walk across the floor.

I believe that his apology could have arisen from an indoor meeting with his leader, PM Bruce Golding. If Golding is anything like the late Michael Manley, he would have taken the overzealous Warmington behind closed doors, told him some choice Jamaican words then asked, "A wha wrong wid yuh, yuh a idiot?" Later, they would emerge smiling and the overzealous one would issue an apology.

Too many in the electorate are of the firm view that our political representatives are extremely disrespectful of us. It is enough that our people are being killed by gunmen, are being lied to by the police and are being taken for a ride that our political representatives are our "servants".

Penn and Teller would call that "bu&%$#!t".

The fact that as a politician Mr Warmington never considered that Mr Greg Christie is the most respected public servant that this country has produced in our post-Independence history and that he, Warmington, has to tread lightly there, tells me that Warmington is the real idiot.

He should resign. Period.

observemark@gmail.com

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