Do your homework before you speak, Mr Bunting
Dear Editor,
A wicked wit once advised a traveller seeking directions: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Mr Peter Bunting, assigned by his elders to travel his party’s “Road to Damascus”, will soon find himself in a similar dilemma, with one notorious alley leading to the JLP’s ‘Coke and Company’, and the other to the PNP’s ‘Garrison and Paseros’.
Predictably, he will go after Coke, but in his search for squalor, he will be missing the other more fetid footpath.
The more experienced political practitioners will watch their words and not pretend that either of the two parties is innocent of association with gangsters. And as it seems he is too young to know, Mr Bunting should be told to do his homework before attempting the House work. For starters he might look up the Daily Gleaner of November 30, 2001, where he will see a picture of the mourners at Burry Boy’s “State” funeral at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in 1975.
Mr Bunting should be informed or reminded that the chief mourner was Prime Minister Michael Manley, that there were at least four other ministers of government present, that the casket was draped with the PNP’s party flag and that there was a gun salute at the cemetery.
Sometime after the funeral, the then PM was questioned in Parliament about a speech he made at a public meeting on November, 21, 1974 at North Parade in Central Kingston. He admitted saying: “I thank the Central Kingston Executive. I thank my paseros of the garrison — Skully, Val, Boots, Vinnie, Burry, Bernard; Spar as a glory.” And he explained to the House that the garrison was a group, not a gang.
Ken Jones
kensjones2002@yahoo.com
