Who is going to hold Tufton accountable for dengue outbreak?
Dear Editor,
I vividly remember how the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) descended on and lambasted Dr Fenton Ferguson for his handling of the chikungunya (CHIKV) outbreak and the “dead babies” issue at the Bustamante Children’ Hospital.
I went on YouTube and the JLP’s website and found video clips of speeches by Messrs Andrew Holness, Daryl Vaz and Audley Shaw emotionally revving up supporters at political rallies in 2016, saying that Ferguson and his Government had been derelict in the execution of their duties and in protecting the health of the nation. In one of those clips Holness told his supporters that he could hear the voices of the dead babies saying if the JLP had been in power they would have been alive. In another clip, Daryl Vaz accused the then prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, of speaking for only three minutes and 34 seconds on the “dead babies” issues in order to protect Ferguson. And, in another clip, Audley Shaw dropped fake tears, saying that his daughter was born premature and may have died if she had been born under Ferguson’s watch.
Turn the clock forward to two years later and we have come to realise it was just an election ploy by the JLP and their spokespersons to trick the electorate. Their words were never worth a grain of salt. Where are they now that babies are dying in this dengue outbreak? There is the sound of silence. It has reached the ears of all of us.
Now we have a ‘serial profiler’ in Minister Christopher Tufton, who has been misleading the nation for weeks that we have been in a dire situation with the dengue outbreak. This serial profiler has been for weeks hopping from media house to media house giving false hope to the nation that the dengue situation is a normal occurrence and that the communities are safe.
Who is going to hold Tufton accountable for dereliction of duties and for misleading the nation?
Where are Holness, Vaz and Shaw in all of this!?
Is it that they have left the serial profiler to navigate his own murky waters, seeing that it is always said he is a bright man?
Well, I have to try and avoid areas with any dengue outbreak because, in the words of a JLP councillor last year: “I may be bitten by a PNP mosquito.” Sad, indeed!
Fernandez Smith
Former Jamaica Labour Party councillor.
fgeesmith@yahoo.com
