SEASONED journalists know that they have to walk gingerly through a virtual minefield of information traps set by the people with private agendas for the unsuspecting newsman or woman. The traps set by unscrupulous politicians are often the most dangerous.

Information Minister Daryl Vaz is, in a way, a victim of this media cynicism. The criticisms reaching him as he bears the enormous burden of being the Government’s chief spokesperson — facing weekly the might of the Jamaican media — are not necessarily personal. Although Clare Forrester’s broadside against him in last Wednesday’s Observer came pretty close to that.

Frankly speaking, some of it is of Vaz’s own making. When he clashed with the Herald’s Christene King at an ATL Autohaus function in Montego Bay sometime ago, it was a near fatal slip. He regained stature with the media and the public when he was big enough to apologise to the veteran journalist.

More recently, he misstepped badly when he cut short CVM-TV’s Andrew Canon who, in arriving late for the Andrew Holness ‘coronation’ by Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) MPs, asked him a question he had earlier answered. Vaz betrayed his lack of experience in public relations by abruptly referring the reporter to “your colleagues”.

In this instance he, more than the media, was the loser, because it was a lost opportunity for him to shine when he had the rapt attention of the entire country.

Yet, the call by Forrester for the removal of Vaz from the information portfolio is highly exaggerated and little attempt was made to justify it. No one reasonably expects that every time a minister errs, he is to be fired.

The problem with Vaz is that he sometimes tries too hard and in his interaction with journalists, the lines can be blurred. He seems to believe that he is one of them. He shares drinks with them and attends intimate events in their lives. His ‘roughing’ up of Canon and his refusal to give the Observer’s Ingrid Brown more than two questions at that press conference are par for the course in the US and elsewhere. He seems to have thought that hardened journalists would think nothing of it.

But nowhere in Vaz’s resumé does he show any journalistic credentials. He came to the job as information minister with little preparation beyond being the savvy salesman who gave Jamaica its formalised and now indispensable used car industry in 1993. If he is seen in that context, Vaz is on course to being one of the most exciting information ministers that Jamaica has seen.

He is often, erroneously, compared with the mild mannered and elderly Burchell Whiteman of the People’s National Party (PNP). Vaz is more to be compared with his PNP counterpart Colin Campbell who did not suffer fools gladly while he ran the portfolio.

But what Campbell could get away with Vaz can’t, because Campbell is a former journalist who enjoyed the professional respect of his colleagues, even when they thought he was brash.

Truth be told, journalists don’t think ill of Vaz. They know he brings passion to the job and, in a perverted kind of way, they lap up his faux pas because they generate oodles of good media copy. Most of all, he is extremely accessible, is not hostile and bears no grudge against media individuals.

Vaz shows his good upbringing in his willingness to apologise for errors, as in the case of journalist King and when Political Ombudsman Herro Blair told him he was wrong for using the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing to call the PNP MPs hypocrites.

“I got a letter from the ombudsman, basically indicating that the words that I used should be used elsewhere, which I accept, but there were no sanctions or anything because the words I used were normal words in the English dictionary,” said the contrite Vaz.

The information minister also told journalists that he would no longer be using the post-Cabinet briefing to respond to party matters. Reporters apparently never thought much about not throwing party questions at him there.

The third man on the bridge

More than ever, he has become the face of the JLP Government with the pending resignation of Prime Minister Bruce Golding and the rise of Andrew Holness. The name being called and the face on television, more than anyone else, after Golding and Holness, is Daryl Vaz. He has become the third man on the bridge.

Daryl Wesley Philip Vaz is a man of destiny. He has had to prove himself every step of the way and be ready to roll with the punches. It’s what he’s now very good at and what he’s done all his controversial life.

One of his most painful bouts has been the dual citizenship debacle against his ‘uncle’, the PNP’s Abe Dabdoub, who dragged him before the courts trying to unseat him from the West Portland constituency on grounds that by being a United States citizen, Vaz couldn’t constitutionally sit in the Jamaican Parliament. In the ensuing by-election ordered by Chief Justice Zaila McCalla, Vaz not only won but increased his victory margin.

Vaz is one of those men who were to the political manor born. His famous father, Douglas Vaz, was a minister in a previous JLP administration before he fell in with the so-called Gang of Five and out with the then JLP leader, Edward Seaga, over Seaga’s perceived autocratic leadership style. Daddy later followed Bruce Golding into the National Democratic Movement (NDM), lost his first election and subsequently hung up his political gloves.

More to the point, the elder Vaz passed the mantle to his son who, in any event, had been bitten by the political bug from age 13. That was in 1976, a time of political turbulence. His father, then president of the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association (JMA), had come home on the night of the 1976 State of Emergency (June 19) to consult with the family about an invitation to join the JLP.

“I supported him wholeheartedly,” says Daryl Vaz. “I followed him night and day throughout the campaign. He was one of only 13 JLP candidates who won a seat in the December 15 general elections of that year.”

Incidentally, that was a sort of birthday gift for Vaz who was born on December 15, 1963, in Jamaica, he adds for emphasis. If fate would have it, Andrew Holness could well call general elections on December 15, 2011. It is a bitter-sweet prospect for Vaz who would then be 48. He is credited with being the leader of the team of young Turks who carried Golding to victory in 2007. Could he do the same for his post-Independent leadership colleague?

Vaz got his first taste of representational politics running successfully as councillor in the Waterloo Division of his old man’s North Central St Andrew constituency in 1986. Taking his cue from his father, he did not run in 1991 because of the famous falling out with Seaga.

Young Vaz put his political career on hold and set his gaze on the world of business as a car broker. He would become well known for pioneering the used car business in 1993, importing the first 78 used cars from Japan and lobbying for a used car policy.

He acquired the Homelectrix building on Hagley Park Road, Kingston. But that was bad timing, he says now. “It was the time of the financial meltdown and I was hit hard. It was a financial disaster and I was forced to sell the business.”

When Douglas Vaz joined Golding in the NDM, Daryl followed suit. He also ditched the NDM when Golding did in 2002 to rejoin the JLP. Vaz stamped his authority on electioneering when, under his stewardship, the JLP scored a 5-4 victory in the 2003 local government polls in traditionally PNP Portland. He entered Gordon House after trouncing Dabdoub in West Portland in the September 3, 2007 general election.

Prime Minister Golding rewarded Vaz with the position of minister of state in the Office of the Prime Minister and put his talent for getting things done to work in project implementation and service delivery. When Golding reshuffled his Cabinet in 2009, he made Vaz a full minister without portfolio with responsibility for project implementation and service delivery.

Importantly he also gave him the onerous task of minister of information and telecommunication and special projects in the Office of the Prime Minister.

“I have tried over the last several years to prove who the real Daryl Vaz is, as a result of all the rumours, innuendoes and propaganda that have been spread about me,” he says calmly.

“But I think that in the last four years I have been able to show Jamaica, by my action, the real Daryl Vaz. And I look forward to continue working for my country.”