There is a scene in the 2007 action movie, Shoot ’em up, where the star, Clive Owen (Mr Smith), is in a hotel room making steamy love to his leading lady when his amorous encounter is rudely interrupted by heavily armed assassins sent there to kill him.

The assassins appear upon him and suddenly force their way through the door and every other point of ingress. Owen has his gun nearby and he rolls into action. He spins, flips, leaps acrobatically off the bed to the floor then against one wall of the room. When the smoke clears all five or six heavily armed assassins are dead, but it stretches the “only in a movie” line by many degrees to find that “Mr Smith” is still locked in a coital embrace with his leading lady!

I love that movie because it is a million miles from reality, and in these stressful times, we could all use a spaceship flight to the extreme edges of our imagination. Flight of fantasy or not, Mr Smith reminds me of the JLP government. It is being shot at from all angles – the media, the Opposition, civil society, and most important of all, the man and woman at street level and in response, it spins, flips and makes impossible contortions as it bounces off the walls in the room.

The big difference to “Shoot ’em up” is that the government has no leading lady, and in fact it is locked in an amorous embrace with itself while doing itself to death. What it needs to do most urgently is woo someone, anyone, not necessarily a Miss Jamaica look-alike; just get her in its room, make love to her, skip around and do a back flip while holding its position in the face of the numerous firing squads aiming its way.

The most serious problem facing this administration is its credibility. If increasingly smaller numbers of people are remaining on board in its defence, then at a critical stage of that credibility process the government will be seen as more impediment than facilitator. “Facilitator” may be stretching it a bit as not too many are now willing to attach that label to it.

The most popular leader in the post-independence period of this country was the late Michael Manley, but two years into his 1972 to 1980 regime he foolishly embarked on geopolitical adventures that made his administration an “enemy” to America.

Prior to his officially endorsing the Cuban communist presence in Angola, he had a meeting with the stone-faced Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974. Said Manley in his book, Struggle in the Periphery, “Suddenly he raised the question of Angola and said he would appreciate it if Jamaica would at least remain neutral on the subject of the Cuban army presence in Angola. I told him that I could make no promises but would pay the utmost attention to his request.”

At that time Jamaica had requested a US$100 million trade credit from the USA and Kissinger conveniently brought it up. Said Manley in the book, “He said they were looking at it, and let the comment hang in the room for a moment. I had the feeling that he was sending me a message.”

After Manley had taken on a foe too powerful to fight, the diplomatic war with the USA was all but lost. To compound matters, with the loss of that “war” with our mighty neighbour to the north and with an effective economic aid embargo on from the beginning of Manley’s flirtation with “democratic socialism” (and his full frontal embrace of the communist Fidel Castro) to the beginning of the Carter regime in 1976, by the beginning of 1977 to 1980 the troubles on the domestic front made it almost impossible for Manley to govern.

The present JLP administration seems set to ignore and learn nothing from history. In the 1970s, Cold War considerations and the ideological similarities between the US and the political directions of the then Opposition JLP did at least signal to us our escape clause. Get rid of the PNP and Manley’s dream to walk to the mountain top with Castro and elect Seaga and we would be back in the good books of the USA.

Today those considerations are not a part of the geopolitical equation connecting us with America, and even though there are those who claim that we can do it alone without the US, whatever ‘it’ is, we would be foolish to believe that America would not now more readily pull the plug on aid packages and make trading arrangements which are more difficult to penetrate if the Dudus request is not solved.

The JLP is just about the same place where Manley was in 1974, but this time around the “ideology” is the request for Dudus, and the egg on the face of the mighty giant, the USA, must be smarting. A significant difference between the events and the periods were between 1974 and 1976 when Manley still had substantial electoral majorities to work with, and there was a time lag between facing down Kissinger and the domestic effects on the economy.

At present, everything unpleasant is happening to this government at the same time. The JLP administration is stridently defending the rights of Mr Coke when it has never been seen to be defending any other Jamaican citizen wanted by the US authorities. In doing this, it has exposed its credibility to us here at home and it has plastered egg on the face of our main benefactor nation in terms of tourism, trade, loan assistance and aid.

How does the government leap this hurdle and act as if it was never in the way? It cannot, even though I can appreciate the bigger problems facing it and the nation. I have said it before, and the Observer recently carried an item endorsing my position (supported by some policemen) that unless Dudus surrenders himself to the US authorities, any attempt to extract him will involve this country in mayhem that very few of us will be prepared for. Elements at street level will ensure that.

What is the way forward?

We can appreciate that the politics of the past is not something that will easily go away. As much as we want to see the end of the garrisons, it is not going to happen overnight. What happens when the Americans send in the second request? Will the PM then say to Tivoli Gardens, “I have tried my best. Unnu dey pon unnu own now!”

What happens after that? The real problem as articulated to me by many Jamaicans from all walks of life is that this government is using the stalling tactic as part of the bigger solution. Well, that’s like taking aspirin for a toothache. Four today, eight tomorrow until the toothache becomes unbearable .

At some stage, a dentist will have to use a sturdy pair of pliers and pull the teeth out from the root. That seems set to happen soon.

Until that day, all the government can do is play mirror games with itself. That, I say, is not sexy.

observemark@gmail.com