KINGSTON, Jamaica — Chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Area Council 2 and Member of Parliament for St Catherine South West, Everald Warmington, says his reference to Minister of Youth and Culture, Lisa Hanna, as a “Jezebel” in the House of Representatives Tuesday, was in response to her insults.

“Liza Hanna insulted and disrespected me. She was quite rude and I only responded to the insults she yelled at me across the floor,” Warmington said in a statement issued yesterday in response to criticisms of his use of the word “Jezebel” in responding to her during an exchange triggered by the $600 per week increase in the national minimum wage announced by Minister of Labour and Social Security, Dr Fenton Ferguson.

The Opposition MP also blamed the media of using double standards in judging persons affiliated to the JLP, as against those affiliated to the PNP.

The statement from Warmington read:

“Firstly, I am not crazy, therefore, I would not have called a member names without cause. There must have been a reason for me to have said what I said.

Liza Hanna insulted and disrespected me. She was quite rude and I only responded to the insults she yelled at me across the floor.

It cannot be that because you may be a woman you can be disrespectful to me and I ignore it, whoever you are. I will respond in like fashion. I did not invent the word jezebel. It came from the Bible and it aptly described her behaviour.

Her disrespect and rudeness was why I asked the Acting Speaker if he could only hear from the left ear, as he seemed only to have heard what I said, and ignored all that was coming from the government side.

This double standard by the news media stinks to high heaven. One woman called the Prime Minister and leader of the PNP “Jezebel” and that party is now embracing and hugging that woman, while the news media cheers them, and the one hand, and try to condemn me on the other. The media see nothing wrong once it happens within the PNP.  To them I committed the gravest sin. Not that what the media thinks matters to me. But, they are pretending as if Lisa Hanna is Mother Theresa. They are not concern about what she said to me that triggered my response.

How did they want me to respond to her rudeness? Call her Mother Theresa or the Virgin Mary? Certainly not.

The media is falling over its self trying to get to the front of the line to broadcast triviality, when there are so many serious and pressing issues that need to be addressed. 

Just look at the level of poverty and suffering in this country; the murder rate, the crumbling infrastructures, the sliding dollar. Yet the media seeks to detain itself with trivial issues.

It is quite clear a majority of media houses and a majority of the so-called journalist are proxies for the PNP, and will stop at nothing in an effort to prop up a failing government and disintegrating party. I can tell that it will not work. They are doing a grave disservice to the people of this country, by trying to make news instead of doing objective reporting.

As for the PNP. A drowning man catches at straws, but this straw will certainly will not save them. They are saying far worse things about each other, than using the word jezebel. They are disintegrating and falling apart, grabbing at trivial issues for salvation. But, this issue will not save them and what should be of concern to them is their disunity.

If they are offended that I called her a jezebel, which is mild to what I have heard them describe her, they need to tell her not to be disrespectful and ‘insultive’ because I will respond in like manner.

May I ask, where was the outcry by the media, when Peter Bunting called us all in the JLP John Crows?

Balford Henry