Barbara Gloudon

A FRIEND OF MINE once told me a story about a "renegade aunt" of his, a woman who did it her way. The fact was she loved a spot of gin. Where there was none, vodka would do.

To the distress of her family - she, a "dee-stant brown lady", did not conceal her proclivity for "the stuff". She could track down a party wherever it was in session. Once there, she accounted for her share of the goodies and then would get back into her travelling gear and lurch off yelling gleefully, "Onward to the next party", leaving behind her embarrassed relatives who tried their best to pretend that she had not been there.

Auntie and her antics came to mind in recent days when, in the fever of excitement at the nomination exercises for the West Kingston by-election, Mr Karl Samuda, bless his heart, seemed to have got quite carried away by the "heady wine" of the moment and announced that they (the JLP) were ready to push the incumbent government out of office.

According to media reports (my only source), Mr Samuda's objective and that of his colleagues, of course, is that the government had better be ready to call general elections at the soonest, way ahead of 2007, the constitutionally sanctioned year of decision.

As I read the accounts of promised demonstrations and other assorted forms of protest, there came to mind a vision of my friend's auntie setting forth into the night, uttering her rallying cry, "Onward to the next party". I can well understand Mr Samuda's adrenalin rush, just like Auntie when the Gilbey's kicked in, the desire to gain new conquests to revive an appetite in danger of becoming dulled.

In Mr Samuda's case, the challenge is a diet of defeat persisting far too long. The eagerness to vary the fare is quite understandable. With his party in the throes of a renaissance, there is every reason that Mr Samuda and his colleagues would wish to take things to the next level.

Nothing would be sweeter than to clean the slate completely - new leader of the party, new leader of the Opposition, and - new leader of the country. To wait another two years must be excruciating to contemplate.

There's a couple of little snags in the scenario, however. From time to time Mr Samuda's team has argued in favour of a set date for general elections. His party's new leader had been one of the most vigorous proponents of an immovable feast. He took the idea into the NDM and back again. How then will the present cry to "fly the gate early", now that his team feels that the track is ready, be in consonance with the stated objectives of the past? But then again, we live in an age when anything is possible. We can always adjust the machine of expediency to fast-forward, re-play, erase, whatever, until the tape comes out just the way we want it. Where there's a political will, there's a political way.

CNN DID NOT SPARE US on Good Friday with the most crushing story of human tragedy portrayed through the eyes of the electronic media. A story which once might have been known to a select few has become table talk in every corner of the globe.

Good Friday 2005 became not the commemoration of Christ crucified, but an American soap-opera, a tragic reality show with characters and circumstances so much larger than life that even the most imaginative scriptwriter would take pause to wonder.

In the words of one TV anchor person it was the "Terry Schiavo Showdown". The protagonists were seemingly made for the TV spotlight. There was the victim - a once lively young woman, who suffered a heart attack, reduced to a vegetative state for 15 years. Her parents clung to the hope that one day she would rise again. Experts claimed that the TV portrayal of her as a rosy-cheeked smiling personality was a cruel hoax of nature. The smile was but a rictus, a contraction of muscles with no emotion behind it. Looks are deceiving, they say.

Without the life-sustaining machine (feeding tube) to which Terry was attached, she would have become a corpse long before. Her husband claims she told him at the start of her illness that she would not want to remain on life support. Not true, say the parents. The husband made the mistake of seeking solace with another woman with whom he started a family. "Adulterer, deceiver," cry the Christian Conservative activists who jump into the case. There's no scorn too strong to pour on the husband. Private tragedy has bloomed into an ugly public travesty, a sad commentary on a sad world.

DON'T BE SURPRISED if one day the life-or-death battle turns up on our list of things over which to divide ourselves. If it happens in America, bet your boots it is going to happen here. People who go overseas for medical treatment have made acquaintance with the phenomenon of "living wills" in which an individual indicates preference for how he or she should be dealt with in the event of illness placing them on life-support machinery.

In recent days, I've heard people express belief that there are such laws here. A legal source told me this week that there is nothing like that on our statute books. I raised the issue with two doctors. One was extremely unhappy at the thought of a patient being kept alive artificially for as long a period as 15 years. "It is our duty to preserve life," he said. "We are committed to that totally, but you also have to be concerned with the quality of life."

Fifteen years on machines helping to simulate life - you have to wonder to what end, he said. "As science creates new developments to be used in the treatment of illness, medical ethics are challenged more and more. It can't be business as usual at all. We have to begin dealing with it here, as elsewhere."

The other doctor had personal experience of having to give the instructions for life support to be discontinued for a patient who happened to be a family member. She had indicated earlier that this was her wish, "but it didn't make it any easier. Being a doctor does not insulate you from the range of conflicting emotions," my source said.

We're already demonstrating an appetite for litigation against doctors and medical care facilities (public hospitals in particular). There's also the ethics question, an area in which the church has a role to play. "It might seem remote from us now," the doctor said, "but we can't evade the consequences for us."

CHALLENGING HISTORY: Was NW Manley anti-Rastafari? It has been suggested to me by a reader that I draw your attention to the book "Manley and the New Jamaica - selected speeches and writings 1938-68" edited with notes and introduction by Rex Nettleford. The relevant chapter, "Mission to Africa - the Rastafari and the Nation", might prove useful in understanding a period of Jamaican history which may have escaped the attention of today's commentators, he advised.

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