It’s a big man who can apologise. Yet too often the politician’s apology is such cold comfort that the consolation that it was supposed to bring falls flat and leaves the hearer empty.

We don’t wish to rob Opposition Leader Mark Golding of his joy that his party is looking good in the most recent Don Anderson polls, but it might have served only to deepen his hunger for victory.

The only thing that seems to explain Mr Golding’s suggestion that he favours ‘dead people voting’ is the intoxicating effect of the cheers and adulation of the party crowd at the St Andrew East Rural constituency conference to name Mr Patrick Peterkin as the People’s National Party (PNP) candidate on Sunday.

“We have fi mek sure seh every Comrade who voted fi the People’s National Party in 2011 and delivered the victory, if they’re still alive, dem haffi go vote fi Comrade Patrick Peterkin when the election call — and even some who not alive, yuh know, if dem can deal wid it, no problem, because as dem seh a we name power, power party,” Mr Golding said.

The PNP president doesn’t need us to educate him on the hell that this country has gone through with bogus voting and the other haunting elements of the electoral madness that we hoped had been put behind us forever, with the considerable help of his own party, through the Electoral Commission.

It is right that he has apologised and withdrawn the remarks, but it is happening too often where even highly intelligent politicians as Mr Golding shoot off at the mouth with their verbal diarrhoea, then come apologising when they face outrage from the society — outrage made even worse by the imbecilic attempt by PNP General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell to pass off the comments as humour.

The case of Mr Everald Warmington, the Member of Parliament and minister without portfolio is another thing altogether. A man who loves to ‘trace’, as our old folk would call his propensity for picking quarrels, he causes one to think he has somebody’s secret.

For a politician, he seems to hate the thought that someone who worked with a politician — on the opposing side of course — should be serving with the Integrity Commission as director of corruption prevention, stakeholder engagement, and anti-corruption strategy.

He didn’t find that the individual in question had done something wrong, only that he had worked with a former politician. That was enough for him to walk out of the Parliament’s Integrity Commission Oversight Committee meeting on Tuesday, when he was not being allowed free rein to sully the person’s reputation.

We have had occasion, several occasions in fact, to draw attention to Mr Warmington’s uncouth behaviour. That he had never been taken to task, at least publicly, by the Jamaica Labour Party hierarchy could cause one to think that they were afraid of him — for whatever reason.

It was therefore refreshing to see Committee Chairman Mr Edmund Bartlett attempt to rein in Mr Warmington and to protect the stature of the Integrity Commission officer, making it plain that it was not enough to impugn his character merely for having worked with a former politician.

Bravo, Mr Bartlett.