Hard talk
Years ago, as a journalism intern, I was sent to interview and write an article on the late Professor George Beckford. Beckford was one of those professors whose legend preceded him. He had been at the University of the West Indies (UWI) for over 25 years. He was the author of numerous journal articles and several books, including his best known work, Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. Although I was a student at UWI, the assignment would be my first meeting with him. It was an honour.
A good deal of what we did then, as feature writers, was writing nice things about important people. So this was a routine assignment, except for one thing: Beckford, 55, was dying of cancer. The interview, should have been in recognition of his stature and of the fact that he had only months to live. I interviewed him and wrote a story mostly highlighting his accomplishments, and his surprising humility.
Even though he interrupted the interview with bouts of coughing, I never mentioned cancer or dying. Nothing in my training or life experience, then, prepared me to have an end-of-life conversation with such an iconic figure. I ignored the elephant in the room.
Beckford likely was at peace with impending death and would have talked about it, had I asked. How much richer would the story have been if I had phrased the questions appropriately, and asked about his diagnosis and prognosis; about choices that he might have regretted; about goals and dreams yet to be realised; and about his fear, or lack of it, of dying.
I recall the experience now as I read Dr Paul Ashley’s challenge to Professor Trevor Munroe, executive director of the National Integrity Action. Ashley’s questions were appropriately irreverent, forcing Munroe to confront issues that, over decades, he has not responded to with sufficient candour, and that are relevant to whether he can be the standard- bearer for the culture of integrity in public life that well-thinking people agree the country needs to cultivate.
His answers remain vague, but others came to his defence and, in the process, misconstrued the issue by relating it merely to the fact that Munroe is an old communist. That is hardly the issue. After all, do we hold the fact that some people call themselves capitalist against them?
The larger issues are easier to ignore because, just like Beckford’s cancer, they are tough to address. Munroe, hailed as a brilliant man himself, knows this about human nature, and about our society in particular, and likely banked on it when he began to rewrite his narrative, not as a politician dogged by serious questions, but as the anti-corruption champion — he who would save our country from one of its worst scourges. If we follow this narrative, Munroe would ultimately exit as a hero, and not as the villain that some think he is.
But some people are uncomfortable with the new mould versus the old. Munroe’s response, “I am no angel” and “I am not pure” are insufficient. I can make those claims myself, as can all of humanity, but we all would not be talking about the same things.
And, certainly, we are all entitled to our failings. None of us should be held perpetual hostage to our indiscretions — except where they may have gone beyond that to have caused serious harm to others, and, if against that background, we set ourselves up as arbiters of integrity without so much as acknowledgement, remorse, or restitution.
In a New York Times article, October 18, 1999, reporter David Gonzalez, noted a rash of “confessions” here, following the murder of former politician and businesswoman, Madame Rose Leon, 85. Beverley Manley (now Duncan), then host of The Breakfast Club, apologised for anything she might have done that “in any way contributed to what Jamaica is today…” Co-host, the late Anthony Abrahams, a former minister of tourism and information in the Seaga Government, said he was willing to talk about troubling events during his career, provided he was given immunity. The late Dudley Thompson, a former Minister of National Security in Michael Manley’s Government, apologised for his 1978 comments about the Green Bay massacre, where soldiers reportedly killed several suspected gang members. “No angels died at Green Bay,” Thompson said.
And, Munroe apologised for his role “advising the doomed Government of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop of Grenada”. Munroe said, however, that the Jamaican discussions had emerged too quickly, without any sort of consultation or legislative guidance in contrast with the South African process, which grew out of its transitional constitution. “I don’t think the confession process here was preceded by any amount of networking. …We began more spontaneously, hence it added a new dimension, political competition,” he said.
Bishop and several associates were executed at Fort Rupert, October 19, 1983, in a power grab by self-appointed Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. The members of the army who carried out the attack mostly belonged to a small group of radicals tutored by Coard. Munroe was described as Coard’s mentor.
Professor Rupert Lewis, a former member of the WPJ, in a 1993 article: “Which way forward for the Jamaican left?” He said the WPJ was dissolved in 1992 because, among other issues, Munroe brooked no opposition. Further, “the issue of the party’s involvement in the infighting in Grenada’s Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), and the position taken by Munroe in support of the military group that emerged after Bishop’s execution created serious divisions. The WPJ came to be identified with Bernard Coard in the eyes of the Jamaican population”.
For a man who cares so passionately about integrity, why didn’t Munroe, in 1999, advocate for the creation of a framework for a commission, possibly modelled on South Africa, to help us resolve some of these issues?
Munroe’s current work on corruption is laudable, but it is not incompatible with the idea that issues around him that remain in our collective consciousness, deserve to be fully ventilated. If we are serious about truth and integrity, we should demand no less.
Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.
PULL QUOTE
Munroe, hailed as a brilliant man himself, knows this about human nature, and about our society in particular, and likely banked on it when he began to rewrite his narrative… If we follow this narrative, Munroe would ultimately exit as a hero, and not as the villain that some think he is.