Very few of us know the main reason which drove then Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller to declare in her pre-election debate in 2011 that if her party was elected, a review of the buggery law would be introduced before Parliament for discussion and vote.

Everyone knew of the JLP’s position, best expressed by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding in a BBC TV Hard Talk interview that he would not countenance any gays in his Cabinet. As for the PNP, the 2011 Simpson Miller declaration came as a shocker and could have been as a result of discussions/agreements our foreign affairs ministry had with its counterparts in the EU capitals and the US.

The possibility also exists that the powerful gay lobby at home, and especially those abroad holding our local entertainers’ fingers to the fire, had used its natural leverage to extract that concession from the PNP.

Whatever the motivating factor, over a year has passed, and if the gay community thought that such clout could move ahead of the realities of our culture and politics and its desired change could happen in a year, it will have a long time and a safe distance from which it can watch the inaction.

One senses that concerns over the failure to ink a new IMF deal have sucked the energy out of the Government when in the first place, this Administration in its first year has never shown any real propensity for sprinting.

The Jamaican dollar is moving at a clip towards being worth one US cent. Business confidence, also caught up in jitters over the IMF, is low, and the poor exist only on the wishes and hopes generated by the roll of numbers four times per day. Who knows, maybe Supreme Ventures is providing the poor with what the Government cannot — hope, packaged with possibilities four times per day.

Minister Paulwell has scored well with the telecoms industry, but with too many stops and starts in the energy ministry, any desires the Administration had that a lowering of the electricity rate due to fuel and power generation innovation would assist its push to attracting new investments in years two and three must now be put on hold.

Violent criminality is driving fear into our people and about half of our bright youngsters who are seeking loans to attend university may have to put their educational aspirations on hold too.

With so much on its plate and acting the confused bearer of the mandate, the PNP really has no time to introduce another uncooked item to the table. And who knows, maybe the promise was simply designed to meet the objectives of the December elections and not a day further.

Sometime ago, Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green confirmed what a lot of us had already known. The vast majority of crime against the gay community was perpetrated by people of that same sexual persuasion. I make this point because the local gay lobby, in association with its counterparts abroad, has always used as a convenient whipping boy its claim of Jamaica being an extremely homophobic nation.

There is a significant amount of distaste for the lifestyle in Jamaica, and too many people I speak to tell me that gays must die. There is, however, some distance between suggesting a state of death for gays and actually going out on a death hunt for them. Nevertheless, the gay lobby continues to spread the falsehood that gay-on-gay crime in Jamaica is mainly about crime against gays.

While Jamaica is a violent country and a part of this is etched into our dancehall music, especially against gays, some concessions have been made by a few local acts who know that live tours abroad make up the vast bulk of their income. But even with that, the very active gay lobby will want to extract 100 per cent of what Portia Simpson Miller promised in 2011.

A Foolish Buggery law

If two adults of whatever mix of sexes wish to revert to the privacy of an enclosed space and indulge their sexual fantasies, it ought to be none of my business.

When I am with my special lady, the last thing I crave is intrusion or the peeping eye of the State, which is essentially what the buggery law is.

But here is where it gets complicated. The law is really about anal sex. If a normal couple — a man and a woman — are in a room having sex and the door should be pushed in by the police, what would the police say? ‘Hold it, No one move! Let me see where everything is!’

It is utterly ridiculous. If the man is indulging in anal sex (ugh!) with the woman, he can be arrested. If two men are found nude in a room and they are in an embrace, which does not include anal penetration, it is my understanding that they can still be arrested under one of the indecency statutes.

As far as I am concerned, if two men are homosexual and they want to be with each other, nothing will stop them, just the same way a man will seek out his female lover. So why does the State require this right to peep inside people’s bedrooms when people are simply doing what comes naturally to them?

That aside, if the law comes up for review and parliament votes in favour of change, it will be felt in a loss at the polls. The politicians know that the church lobby will rise up and many citizens will label an Administration which brings it on as ‘b… man party.’

Simpson Miller knows this, and so do her members of parliament. If in 2011 she was moved simply by her conscience, she is not saying. I choose not to believe that, especially when I view the confluence of the activities of the gay lobby versus our deejays, numerous letters to the media from gay activists, and pressure from pro-gay foreign diplomats with close ties to the PNP.

Whatever moved her then will move her no further on the matter. In simple language, it’s dead.

Hope you enjoy carnival, Phillip Paulwell

As much as I know that a politician has very few hours in a day for himself, I still consider Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell’s current trip to Trinidad for carnival an insensitive move.

Recently I spent about six hours touring a constituency with a member of parliament (not a minister like Paulwell) and I can tell you, his phone never stops ringing. Each place that we stopped there were people always wanting to see him or talk about something and, of course, some wanted something from him in the here and now. Not tomorrow.

It was highly stressful, and one has to be made for it.

As for Paulwell, he ought to have appreciated the political value of symbolism. In 2009, at the height of the global recession and its effects in Jamaica, then Prime Minister Bruce Golding took a 15 per cent pay cut and all his MPs and Cabinet ministers took a 10 per cent pay cut. The PNP Opposition members would not budge and took their full salaries.

At the time no one was pretending that the money saved would jump-start Jamaica’s perennially weak economy, but it sent a signal that the prime minister and his team were somehow in there with the people and their pain.

Paulwell has been the most energetic Cabinet minister and it is likely that the speed that he used to enact legislation on the telecoms bill was a follow-up to what was laid out in the previous Administration. No sweat, though, and we congratulated him.

At a time when our approach to energy reform is best expressed in its many stops and starts, especially the recent one when the OUR is heading in one direction, and JPS in another, Paulwell figures that heading to carnival will not move us one way or the other.

Frankly, I believe that his prime minister should have immediately requested his return. He wouldn’t have to say that it was so, but, when there is no leadership, anyone can do anything.

I am not denying Minister Paulwell the right to ease the enormous stress levels that must build up in him from day to day, but surely, why would he want to allow one trip to generate the perception that the PNP Government is an uncaring one?

Rebel Salute was enjoyable and was on our soil. While not all could have afforded it, it was well worth it. The Jazz Festival was on our soil but it was not for the light of pocket. Carnival is ‘somewhere else’ and very few of us can afford a plane ticket there.

To me, the timing was poor, and hence I saw it as being insensitive to the present mood of the country.

Then again, maybe Mr Paulwell knows that come 2016 all his party has to do is wind up the robots that make up 26 per cent of the electorate and hope that the JLP gets about 24 per cent.

Dwight Nelson on Honduran Fishing boats

Former National Security Minister Dwight Nelson wrote last Thursday, “I am intrigued by your comments in today’s newspaper on the invasion of our territorial waters by Honduran fishing boats and the economic implications. Your column also mentions confrontations with the Honduran boats and the Jamaican Coast Guard. I was the minister of national security at the time.

“I wish to point out that incursions by Honduran fishing boats have wider implications than the depletion of our fish stock. There is a guns-for-drugs trade between Honduran boats and Jamaican fishermen. This prompted me to visit Honduras last year for talks with the Honduran Government. The end result was a signed agreement between both governments to examine our respective laws and to have a technical team meet once per year in Jamaica so as to ensure the protection of our fisher folk.

“I might also mention that I signed a similar agreement with the Government of Cuba to combat the drug route between Jamaica and the Bahamas. I visited a number of Jamaicans in Cuban prisons held for drug trafficking.

“These agreements I brought to the attention of the minister of national security.

“I agree with you that national security, agriculture, and fishing need to get cracking and upgrade our laws, particularly the Fishing Industry Act sections 1-23.”

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