FORTY-THREE years ago, in 1973, when I was 19-going-on-20 years old, I was a teacher at the Lluidas Vale Youth Camp (now a branch of the HEART programme) near Worthy Park in St Catherine. On off-duty weekends, I would normally take buses, such as Grey Liner, Grey Mist, Mail Bus, or Rusty into Kingston. On one occasion, I got a ride into Kingston with the camp director, Lloyd Leslie (now deceased).

Somewhere in Spanish Town, Leslie said that he needed gasolene and I responded that he just passed a gas station. “I never mix my gas,” he said. He went to stations selling the same brand of petrol. My point here is that ‘bad gas’ is not a new thing but, in fact, has been going on for several decades. Garage mechanics were very diplomatic in those days. Upon detection of an engine problem, they never asked, “Where did you buy your gas?” Their diagnoses were always that you had “mixed’ your gas, which might explain the term Leslie used.

Between the late 1970s to mid 1980s I drove a second-hand Fiat 124, and I mistakenly thought that all of my engine problems — that car ‘lived’ in garages — were because my car was old. But, in retrospect, the real problem might have been that I simply bought from the nearest station whenever I was low on gasolene.

The difference today is that Jamaica is currently on an election watch. Politicians will be politicians, just as media practitioners will be media practitioners. So some radio news journalists have squeezed as much as they can out of the’bad gas’ affair.

Feuds and wounds

And speaking of elections, it is interesting that it is the first time that the People’s National Party (PNP) has come so close to an election with open rifts, assuming that an election will in fact take place in a month or two, as is believed. True, there have been times in the past when divisions in the PNP were raging before an election, but never was it as open in the PNP as in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the 1990s.

The difference is that the splits in the PNP, at present, are not from the ‘main arteries’, as in say, 1952, with the ‘Four Hs’ affair. Today, there are the usual quarrels caused by someone being vexed at not having been chosen to be a candidate.

In the Jamaica Labour Party, the divisions have by and large tended to be open opposition to the leadership. In 1952, the ‘Four Hs’ affair (Richard Hart, Frank Hill, Ken Hill, and Arthur Henry) was more than just an ideological division because it was felt that there would be a challenge to Norman Manley.

So how was it that after that PNP split in 1952, with the Four Hs subsequently forming the National Labour Party that ran in three constituencies , the PNP could achieve their first-ever victory in 1955?

It was because the ruling JLP (up to 1955) had an even bigger split. The real JLP campaign funders broke away to form the Farmers Party which ran in 13 of the then 32 seats available and split the JLP votes. The Farmers Party also divided the JLP effort in terms of party workers and money as did the National Democratic Movement in 1997.

The PNP’s unifying point since its inception has always been its ideology or manifesto. The JLP’s traditional point of unity was in following Sir Alexander Bustamante “till we die”. Even Bustamante himself feared that once he left the political scene the divisions would set it (

Alexander Bustamante and Modern Jamaica by George Eaton, page 244). So if the two main political parties can be likened unto two large trees, one party tends to have its rifts in the small branches and twigs, while the other tends to have its rifts in its trunk. And you can guess for yourselves which is which.

But election victories are about organisation rather than the issues, which I have written for many years. And elections are won on election day. This was further confirmed to me in 2007 when I predicted a landslide for the JLP, but they just barely won that election.

After 18 years of the PNP in power I thought that the younger voters would want to experience the JLP in power, in addition to the unhealed PNP rift following the Simpson Miller victory over Peter Phillips. But, in the end, a shortage of party funds which hindered the PNP from paying its party workers was the real reason for the PNP’s defeat in 2007. Is the present JLP rift between Andrew Holness and Audley Shaw fully healed? The election results might be one indicator either way.

So protesters in support of Raymond Pryce had their costly protest at the PNP headquarters early last week. My information is that the protesters were not all from St Elizabeth North Eastern, which is perhaps one reason the chosen candidate still remains the party’s choice.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com