In this age of rapid advancement in robotics and nanoscience, as applied to machinery and humans, change as an accepted philosophy of political governance is crucial in bridging the gap to the next generation’s social and economic success.

Love him forever or despise his memory, but I believe the late Michael Manley (prime minister 1972-1980, 1989-1992) understood this, especially at his signature best — upgrading the social strength of the most dispossessed in the country.

In briefly examining Michael Manley’s legacy, one can pick the few similarities he shared with our present Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, while dispassionately accepting that the intellectual gap and political fervour between them were cosmic distances apart.

They both shared public love for the poor, but Manley seemed always to have been in active mode, trying to bring change to their lot, even if, in many instances, he would place the social cart before the economic horse.

In Simpson Miller’s case, her admitting to the presence of the poor, and publicly lavishing them with social cosmetics and public welfare seem to have been the highest points of the understanding of her multifaceted role as prime minister.

I am not trying to make a case that the PM does not want to change the plight of the poor and reduce their numbers in the society. I am certain that she does, but her actions indicate that somehow she believes that it can be achieved without the engagement of other sectors of the society and her direct leadership of the complex processes involved.

Additionally, her interface with that same public, and especially the press in recent days, indicates that she has not yet come to grips with the fact that an increasing number of those who would, just about a decade ago, endorse her purely for showing up at the party are now willing to admit that her presence there has not made the music any more enjoyable, and very few are dancing.

In the early 1970s when the late Jamaican crooner Wilfred ‘Jackie’ Edwards (Tell Me Darling) returned to Jamaica, I sat with him one evening at his Meadowbrook home and engaged him in conversation. He told me a story of his fellow Jamaican singer who was Jamaica’s darling in the 1960s. One day, while he was less than a second-stringer with her on tour of an African capital, the people were falling over each other for her and constantly shouting out her name.

As they moved to a different area — where the people seemed not to have got the message of her popularity — she became enraged, had the tour car stopped, exited, and rudely shouted to the seemingly disinterested gathering, “Don’t you know who I am? I am xxxxxx xxxxx!”

I am getting the distinct impression that our prime minister wants to shout to us, to impress upon us that we should accept her purely on her own terms, which is, she is present, she represents Jamaica’s poor people’s royalty; she ought to be readily embraced on that understanding, and no one should ever dare bring into question any of her perceived weaknesses.

As the first person in the media to have written of, and maintained in these columns, the fact of Simpson Miller’s reluctance to face the local media one-on-one — and the foreign press ‘safely’ — it seems that the actions of the still popular prime minister are indicative of a more unpalatable reality, long admitted by some even right there beside her in the PNP Cabinet and environs.

Her glaring leadership flaws, including her seeming inability — or refusal — to quickly think through pressing, complex and controversial matters and explain them to an increasingly impatient public come to the fore.

In her short run in 2006-2007, and in the last 15 months, she has continued to demonstrate those weaknesses without a recognition that they have done disservice to the passionate fervour and intellectual tradition of which the PNP was supposed to represent in the service of this nation.

Let us appreciate that the prime minister’s success is our own, that is, if she is willing to draw back from the raw politics.

No one but the most socially secure and encapsulated would want to be assured that our prime minister has studied all of the great African, Asian, European, and American philosophers, has a library of DVDs on Russian opera and Japanese Kabuki, can recite a soliloquy from any of Shakespeare’s plays, and can discuss chapter and verse on the greatness of Jamaican painter Barrington Watson.

It is probably a safe bet to assume that the PM has not done any significant volume of reading on comparative economic theories, anthropology, astronomy, or can explain to us the difficulties that Noah must have had in shovelling away animal crap from the hundreds of thousands of animals that were supposed to be on his Ark for about six weeks.

Very few of us can do that but, even if our prime minister is not in touch with many of the false refinements which those at the top give to themselves, we would still like to hear from her on what a new IMF deal will mean, and what the short- and medium-term prospects for the poorest among us.

We would like to know what her Government is doing to bring Cabinet cohesion to growth plans in the present term. Why is Montego Bay Mayor Glendon Harris making so many missteps? Why is Peter Bunting crying and praying? And why is Richard Azan hiding behind his plastic smiles?

Prime minister, your information minister, Sandrea Falconer, is desperately trying to convince us that you, her leader and our chief servant, is from an endangered species and must be protected from the press in our highly touted democracy, to the point of trying to sell us a story that microphones are deadly weapons.

It is hard on the prime minister, but this refusal to grow out of her politics of the past and evolve into a leader for the rapidly changing times by itself is troubling. But added to that is her refusal to engage the press except for her combative stance, as if we have no right to use our dirty feet to tread on her royal domain.

One could easily understand if this kind of imperious leadership was coming from a prime minister whose mind was always occupied with subtly retaining some of the social dimensions of our colonial past.

Coming from one who has always claimed to be representative of the poor, the voiceless and the powerless, it is extremely disheartening and downright dangerous.

observemark@gmail.com

SIMPSON MILLER… we should accept her purely on her own terms, which is, she is present, she represents Jamaica’s poor people’s royalty

MANLEY… seemed always to have been in active mode, trying to change the lot of the poor