Against the background of his fast, phenomenal and all too easy, predictable rise to the post of leader of the JLP, it would seem petty of me or at the worst, partisan, to be speaking of Golding's decline. If anything, he is certain to 'win' the by-election in West Kingston against a hapless PNP candidate and a representative of the still-to-be-interred NDM, come next Wednesday.

Golding will rise to become a member of parliament again and sometime later, leader of the Opposition. So, where is the fall, the decline to which I am referring?
Last week, the security forces moved into two JLP areas - Tawes Pen (Little Tivoli) and Ellerslie Pen - areas known to have more than their fair share of guns. Tawes Pen is also the headquarters of the One Order gang.

Last Wednesday, when Golding made his threat that there would be 'bangarang' should the security forces continue to operate as they have been doing in Spanish Town, he merely demonstrated once again his inherent weakness as a leader and his tendency to flip and flop all over the floor. Said Golding during a campaign speech in Fletcher's Land: "The police have the full support of the JLP, but what happened in Spanish Town is unacceptable.

They went in there before day and proceeded to grab up every young man. What is happening down there is something that is happening in Afghanistan. If it is wrong in Afghanistan, then it is doubly wrong in Jamaica. This is like a Nazi concentration camp."

GOLDING. his 'new and different' image was a hoax

Weeks before that, Golding allowed General-Secretary Karl Samuda to define the JLP's opposition strategy when Samuda promised that the JLP would be mounting massive street action to force the PNP into early elections. When Samuda issued those 'threats' I got the impression that either the general-secretary was leading the JLP into defining the real role of the JLP, or he was usurping the very role of the party leader.

Samuda did it last year on the Impact TV programme with Golding. On that programme, Golding simply leaned back and allowed Samuda to say what he, Golding, was afraid to say.
Last Wednesday, I saw the real Golding at last, and his objectives were as clear as crystal. But what was the main objective? Golding wants to be another Seaga!

After witnessing Seaga choking the JLP for the last 10 years, the old traditionalists like Pearnel Charles huffed and puffed out of earshot of Seaga but did nothing, because they who had imbued Seaga with majesty were nothing more than gardeners tending the palace grounds.

It took the concerted efforts of the young Turks inside the party to push Seaga to the exit door. To do this they held Golding aloft like a mascot, and even when he threatened to retreat, they simply held on to his tender places.

In the early wake of Seaga's departure one sensed that fresh air was about to be breathed into the vitals of the ever so fractious JLP. One saw the raw energy and the determination of the 'reformists' and felt that, at last, there was a foil to the 0 fat, greasy, tired men in the ruling PNP Administration.

Then came the Central Executive meeting in early March to elect JLP officers. When someone told me that goons from West Kingston had shown up at that meeting in support of Golding I dismissed it as damn rubbish.

Not Bruce Golding and his "new and different" image. When I attempted to ferret out more information, all I got from those who would normally give me information were tightly sealed lips. Even that, I thought, was good for the JLP, fuelled ever so often on too much 'suss'.

At about the same time, another JLP source told me that at that meeting in Portmore where Transport Minister Bobby Pickersgill made his quite funny 'Is it that time of the month?' faux pas, a JLP 'reformist' MP had trucked in two busloads of JLP supporters to add politics to the genuine concerns of Portmore residents over the Highway 2000 toll. I dismissed that as utterly false.

With Golding's 'bangarang' speech, all hopes were dashed that a post-Seaga JLP energised with new leadership, direction and a full grasp of how the stranglehold of the past kept that party in the political doldrums would take the JLP to a 'higher level'.

All it meant was that after Seaga, the party now has another Seaga in the face, body and utterances of Bruce Golding, soon to be the new general of the streets.

To some of the students of political history, there is nothing new about Bruce Golding. In the early1980s and after, some in the PNP referred to him as 'The minister of war', even as the JLP saw South St Andrew MP Tony Spaulding as 'Evil Personified'.

Between 1980 and 1995 the constituency which Golding held - Central St Catherine - was overrun with thugs, guns and a loosely defined link between politics and street goons. In the long years when Golding was MP for Central St Catherine and Cabinet member, one factor stands out, and that is the underdevelopment of the constituency.

Ramshackle, zinc fence lanes, craters in the roadways, high unemployment and crime rates. In 1995 when Golding made the radical move from the JLP to forming his own party, the NDM, many like myself encouraged and lauded his political move. The errors we made then were in ascribing noble motives to his leaving the JLP.

We had thought that Bruce Golding was struck Pauline-like and had divested himself of all the political baggage which cluttered his past. It was the view of many of us that Golding was the inventor of 'clean' politics.

I saw Golding as a man who had to make his personal, lonely sojourn to the top of a mountain to consult with himself and the voices within, just so that he could filter out all of the noise of the detractors. I wrote about it and even referred to 'the movement to come' two months before the National Democratic Movement was formed.

It now seems for sure that there was nothing noble about that move in 1995. Seaga had 'dissed' him, saying that there was no one in the JLP ready to take over the leadership should he (Seaga) leave. It stung Golding and, after a quick series of manoeuvrings, the NDM was brought about.

In hindsight, and based on the fact that his tenure inside the JLP in 1995 was brought effectively to an end because no backpedalling was allowed, it would seem that Golding led many good men to their political demise that same year.

Golding's 'noble cause' move was developed AFTER he left the JLP. Unlike many of those who left the party before him, Golding spent ALL of his time in the NDM tar-brushing the JLP. Those who had walked away from the party before him spoke of Seaga as the problem.

Not so with Golding who never once hurled a barb at Seaga, his mentor and now, the deity to which he must genuflect and eventually become.

In his harsh criticisms of the JLP, Golding was at pains to point out that the party practised a nasty sort of politics which involved gunplay, political thugs and voting irregularities. In The Politics of Crime, a 1997 programme sponsored jointly by RJR and JBC-TV, Golding took the PNP and the JLP to task and won the respect of quite a significant percentage of the adult population of this country.

On that programme Golding was not into any niceties. He spelled out the tribal nature of the PNP/JLP politics and gave good reasons for being on the outside, seeking a new direction for the people of Jamaica.

One day in 1997 when he was seeking reelection in Central St Catherine, but that time on the NDM ticket, he went into Ellerslie Pen and had to leave after a show of gunplay by JLP gunmen. He called "Mutty" Perkins on his programme and complained about the guns and the thuggery. Minutes later, the JLP candidate "Babsy" Grange called and poured cold water on Golding, essentially saying to him, where was he in the pre-1995 times.

Now that Ellerslie Pen is in the news, Golding is JLP and the security forces are trying to ferret out the guns, a most disingenuous Bruce Golding has the gall to be telling us that it will be 'bangarang' if the security forces keep up the pressure. What absolute nerve of this man who can't even define himself.

When he was NDM and he was conveniently clean, the situation in Ellerslie Pen was about guns and thugs. Now that the politics has moved from 'new and different' to 'same way and nasty', he has moved from flip to flop. Pretty soon he will be defining the thugs as heroes!

Come Wednesday, another Seaga will be created when Golding wins the West Kingston seat. After that he will have a new set of faces around him, following him, watching outside his gate.

Come Wednesday, April 13, 2005, the JLP which I thought was all set to breathe the fresh air of coherence, unity, and Golding's new and different MOU, will instead remain in the rank, fetid space which it has occupied for the last 30 years.

It will prove to us that Golding was a hoax, his "new and different" image a hoax and his new dispensation a hoax and a great slap in the face of this nation. Everything which he has attained politically was handed to him on a platter.

Those who dragged him, impelled him, placed chairs underneath his rump and directed his modus operandi knew him well, all too well. They warned me, but I did not believe them for one moment. You know why they were directing him and choreographing his every move? If they left him alone, all by himself for even five minutes, he would morph into a Seaga.

We have come full circle.

observemark@hotmail.com

The real purpose of the UWI?

Three online readers of my column have simultaneously sent me a clipping from the Economist magazine which recently published a startling statistic on the percentage of graduates from developing countries living in first world jurisdictions.

That these first world countries like the US, Canada, Australia and the EU states are the repository of the best of our brains should not be a surprise to us, but it is in the sheer percentages that the shock value lies.

Guyana tops the list with 83 per cent of its graduates living in first world countries. And of course, the shocker is that Jamaica, due to all of its relative underdevelopment, has 82 per cent of its graduates living in these countries. Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and Fiji complete the top five lesser developed countries which exist to provide first world countries with brain expertise.

What this means is that only 18 per cent of our university graduates (UWI and foreign colleges) are living in Jamaica or outside of the sphere of the OECD countries. It would be interesting if the Mona Campus could provide us with some numbers in terms of how many graduates we need per year to fill the job spaces open for them locally, and what are the average salaries of these graduates. Maybe Senator Trevor Munroe could assist.

It is not uncommon to find in Jamaica, bright UWI graduates, especially females, aged 26 years old working in fields like say, journalism and earning less than $40,000 per month. No wonder they leave to enrich countries like Canada, the US and Britain.

These percentages put a whole new spin on the new entrants and sophomores at Mona bawling about the 'high cost' of their highly-subsidised education. They bawl, get the low-cost, first-class education (can't vouch for post-graduate level) and then, in a year or two, move themselves abroad.

I can't blame them because they have to live. But what they should do is stop the stupid bawling, tighten their belts, get their education and allow the rest of the unfortunates in the society to scrounge in silence on $4,000 per week.

Happy birthday, Maurice Wignall

It has been a long trip from that cool April 10 afternoon in 1976 when your mother gave birth to you. Today you, an island boy from a nation of 2.7 million people in a world of six billion people, are presently rated by the IAAF as the third best sprint hurdler on the planet, behind two men.

One, the American from a super nation close to 300 million and another, the Chinese, from a nation (the next world power) exceeding one billion souls. Not bad for an island boy, not bad at all.

I must admit I feel uncomfortable wishing you a happy 29th in this manner. Some will say that I am using the column for too personal a purpose. You are, after all, son and I am father and I write for public consumption. If my columns lose their flavour, my readership will decrease.

But guess what? You have made the news, and you are news. For that I believe I am on sound grounds. On behalf of your mother Maureen, your big brother Mark Jr, your sister Marjean and your nephew Mark 3rd, I am wishing you all the best for your day.

I know you are in training for the World Games in August, so maybe you don't have the time to add the finishing touches to your website. Keep me informed though, because I want you to build mine for me. After the Games, though. Sincere love, son and all the best on your special day.

Shaggy & Friends take a bow

Two-day Gathering of the Peacemaker in Negril

Patrons rang in the New Year with gusto at 11:59