It is just about a month since Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller stood before a massive throng of comrades and, in her capacity as PNP president, she intoned strongly that she had no intention of selling out the party to big interests. She was, after all, the people's champion with a keen understanding of their needs, and that time around in the PNP and, by extension, the nation, she had come out to bat on behalf of the poor and powerless.

As PNP president and Jamaican prime minister, under her watch big, corporate interests would never have a chance at purchasing influence in her party and government.
As they say in Jamaica, "mout mek fi chat".

Weeks before when 99.99% of us had never heard of the name Trafigura and it had not yet taken on the connotations of national shame, PNP scandal and sell out, the prime minister had already met with Trafigura representatives at Jamaica House.
We have only the PNP's word that the funds to come were not solicited.

As the PNP would have us believe, at that time only Colin Campbell knew of this hefty 'gift' to arrive. No one else; not the party chairman and Cabinet minister with part-time treasurer responsibilities Bobby Pickersgill, not the organisers of the upcoming annual conference and, although she would immediately afterwards meet with Trafigura reps, not the prime minister.

At the very moment when Portia (the champion who had left Peter Phillips and Omar Davies licking their wounds on February 25) was reaching out to us and touching something deep in comrades and the many others who listened and believed in her sincerity, Trafigura had already wired three money transfers ($31.256 million) to an account named CCOC, which means Colin Campbell Our Candidate.

While Portia was in her element before that huge crowd at the National Arena and telling us that she would never sell out to the 'big man', the poor and powerless who listened and wanted to draw themselves close to her were not aware that an account named SW Services (Team Jamaica) was opened and $30 million of the Trafigura money had been stashed there.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller

At the time of the many frozen moments when Jamaicans from Gully bank to Cherry Gardens, from deep rural to beach mansion watched Portia on TV capturing us all over again by telling us that her party would be seeking small amounts from small people, the PNP, or others, had weeks before collected J$31 million from a 'big man' company which in 2005 had made US$26 billion.

The only 'real' things a poor person has to offer are civility and his word. If he gives you his word, it is his bond. If an uptown man gives a poor man his word, the poor man expects him to live up to his word. Don't tell him you are going to give him two sheets of zinc then disappear on him.

If you don't show up, he is devastated, especially if he had believed in you before. If he finds out that you were really fooling him when you made the offer, he is destroyed and any love left in him will easily turn to hate.

For Portia, it was good that at the time she spoke, none of those Jamaicans who heard her, watched her, knew of what had taken place in the PNP or, on the periphery of the PNP, weeks before.
At all times during her two-hour presentation at the 'mother of all conferences', none of us knew that weeks before, a person or persons in the PNP had allowed Trafigura to 'donate' $31 million of funds to CCOC, probably knowing full well that in the laws governing the country of origin (The Netherlands) Trafigura could only make a 'gift' if it was made public.

After her rise to the post of PNP president and prime minister, which was, she later said, the appointment of the Almighty, the oracle that Portia had become saw goodness and 'sterling service' in one Colin Campbell. So she made him minister of information and development.

At the time when she was winding us up and spreading joy on the sea of comrades, forcing us to reconsider the JLP's epitaph, and had her animated audience eating out of her hands, none of us knew of the existence of constituency fund-raising accounts 'SW Inc', and 'SW Services SE' in Portia's South West St Andrew constituency and their similarity to the one which would become infamous - SW Services (Team Jamaica).

Had we known of what was taking place behind the scenes deep in the heart of Norman Manley's PNP, we would have asked the prime minister some questions.

Questions for the prime minister

Prime Minister, did you send out any emissaries seeking party funding? If you did not dispatch any emissaries and it was in fact Trafigura which suggested the 'donation', who was the person in your party who conveyed the message to you?

If it was Trafigura which suggested the 'gift', were you aware of the legalities surrounding Trafigura and the country of origin of the gift?
If Trafigura made the suggestion, did you question its motive, considering that the Government of Jamaica was in official business with Trafigura and, more importantly, it was close to the date of any contract renewal with the company?

If it was indeed Trafigura which suggested the 'gift', at about the time when the funds would have been arriving in Jamaica (mid-September), would you not have been aware that Trafigura had attempted to dump toxic waste in Amsterdam and had ultimately dumped it in the Ivory Coast on August 19 where it had caused death to poor black people?

Prime minister, when the representatives of Trafigura met with you at Jamaica House, what were the discussions about?
Why did you meet with them alone?
Prime Minister, if you only became aware of the 'donation' when the leader of the opposition awoke the nation to it, do you sincerely believe that as a person who should have known what your ministers have been up to, we should continue to consider giving you another shot at your own mandate?

Prime Minister, you have not said anything!

Most of the information that this nation has had on the prime minister's involvement in the Trafigura affair has been fed to us through a telephone conversation between Nationwide's Cliff Hughes and PAJ president Desmond Richards.

As editor of the Sunday Herald, Desmond Richards enjoys a close relationship with the prime minister, especially in the time when most columnists writing for the leading dailies, the Observer and the Gleaner, were criticising the prime minister.

I have been one of the harshest critics of Prime Minister Simpson Miller ever since she told a congregation of church-goers in Portmore that it was God who appointed her and the people had a duty to support the appointment of the Almighty, as well as after her horrible budget presentation and her leadership bungling during crises like the Cement Company rotten-cement affair and the subsequent shortage.

In the Trafigura scandal, I have been very passionate in my criticisms of her.
While the prime minister was in hiding and the nation which she leads sat waiting, watching and hoping that she would say something, last Tuesday she allowed elected persons in her party and Cabinet to bat for her as the PNP tail was forced to wag the PNP dog. Last Tuesday, as Opposition Leader Bruce Golding made his no-confidence resolution against the Government, the prime minister, always a late person, decided that it would be best if she missed Golding's presentation. In essence, she took the coward's way out.

As persons like KD Knight and Peter Phillips stepped up to the bat, a little bit. no, a whole lot, of Portia faded. We saw the sham for what it was - KD Knight, not a well-liked man nationally and, certainly to the public, a man who considers Portia to be less than bright, coming out for the PNP and sounding like a lawyer who knows he is talking BS, but going along with it because it is something that lawyers do.

When the prime minister's time came, it was the mother of all anti-climaxes. The information she had previously passed on to Desmond Richards went terribly missing.
After Richards had given us certain information via his conversation with Portia and through his weekly newspaper, we expected the prime minister to come clean.

Richards told Nationwide that the prime minister told him that she would not be coming to the nation until she was 'armed with all the information'. Two weeks after Golding had shocked this nation by his revelation that the PNP had taken money from a company that was doing business with the Government, the prime minister comes to the nation, and instead of leading, is led by Cabinet ministers and MPs who think little of her abilities.

Then when she speaks, it is only to tell us that nothing is wrong, nothing went wrong and the PNP is squeaky clean. It cannot quite square with the fact that her choice appointment, Colin Campbell, has been fired, the attorney-general has apologised to the nation for his initial defence of the 'gift', and she had decided to give it back to Trafigura.

She told Richards that she had met with representatives of Trafigura, yet in her presentation last Tuesday, this appointment of the Almighty chose not to come clean with the whole truth by saying in the House that she had met with them.

Led by Prime Minister Simpson Miller, the PNP en masse told us that they committed no sins, and it was neither illegal nor immoral to accept the $31-million 'gift' from Trafigura. All of that after one minister has apologised for his initial stance, her very special appointee had been fired and Finance Minister Omar Davies later said it was wrong for the PNP to have accepted the 'gift' from Trafigura.

The prime minister failed to explain to us the similarities between the names of the fund-raising accounts for her constituency and SW Services (Team Jamaica) into which $30 million of the $31.256 million went.

It appears to me that the prime minister loves the poor only to the extent that she can make them fodder for her leadership omissions. She has to answer to the nation. If she really believes that it was God who appointed her, then she will have to deal with her god when night descends on her and a soft voice floats over from nowhere and says, "Portia, I have found you wanting. Go back to the people you say you love and bare all to them.

They will love you for it and forgive you, but only if you take them into your confidence".

After two weeks, Portia comes to the nation and delivers to us a damp squib. Too much is missing, and the pieces of the puzzle do not fit, prime minister. In the interim, the PNP is hoping that widespread ignorance will trip in and save the day for it. Sorry guys, not this time around.
Portia, I weep for you

My assessment of Portia's sketching

Last Wednesday's Observer front page carried a picture taken by Observer Photo Editor Michael Gordon, who was very obviously on the balcony above the PM. As a human interest photo, it allowed us to delve inside the mind of our prime minister.

It showed a sketch of a wine glass, a beer mug, an androgynous face attached to a body and a triangle.
There is a world of difference between doodling and sketching. Be careful not to miss it. In doodling, one allows the pen or pencil to find its own level, so to speak. At the end, the result is more what the hand and the pen did, rather than what the mind directed it to do. One can doodle even while speaking.

Obviously, the mind is in control at all times but in doodling, the mind remains alive to the main subject at hand while subduing its own direction on the paper. In sketching (as against doodling), one tunes out the mind from any other subject and brings into focus the NEW main subject, which in this instance is the sketch.

The sketch follows the direction of the conscious mind as it must navigate around SPECIFIC curves and angles, symmetry, drawing eyes, nose etc.
The PM was under major stress and the sketching was her attempt at TUNING OUT what was being said in order to salvage her sanity.

At the time when the biggest political crisis of her life faced her, the prime minister alleviated her stress by sketching. As a human, she had to do this.

The tentative lines which outline the face of the person in her drawing and even in the most forceful object on the page, the last one sketched, the triangle, tells me that Portia took her time, a wise move when major stress is on.

I will not attempt to make an assessment of the specific objects and what they meant, either separately or in sequence. Based on the prime minister's presentation, I fear that the PM has only opened up for herself many more sessions of sketching.

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