It is very refreshing that both the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’ National Party (PNP) have moved with unaccustomed haste to discipline two errant members of their party for outrageous and disgusting statements made in the public sphere. These are Everald “Warmy” Warmington of the JLP, the Member of Parliament (MP) for St Catherine South Western, and Dennis Meadows, PNP caretaker for Northern Trelawny.

The bona fides for outlandish public commentary from Warmington are well established. Although he seems to be well loved in his constituency, throughout his long sojourn as an MP and official of the JLP, he has demonstrated a boisterous temperament, which some have shrugged off as just “Warmy being Warmy”.

For some, his latest behaviour was just vintage Warmington: feisty and obstreperous. But this time he was adjudged to have gone too far. He put his proverbial foot in his mouth and kicked out two teeth. It is one thing to say outrageous things about or to people with whom you disagree as Warmy has a long history of doing. But it is quite another when you are a minister of government to indicate to the public that you are willing to make public funds a hostage of your own jaundiced view of partisan politics.

Threatening to withhold funds from supporters of an opposite political party is par for the course for the dirty politics we have practised since Independence. Both sides have done it, so Warmington was standing in that tradition. His sin is that as a minister he said it loudly. More temperate and perhaps insidious personalities would have done so in private. It was no longer a matter of a politician rounding off his mouth, but a minister who had responsibility for works, and thus control over contracts and how money is spent, telling the nation that he was prepared to starve the other side, his perceived enemies, of funds. There was no internal locus of control to warn him that this was not his money to do with as he had a mind. Neither did he stop for one moment is his putrid diatribe to consider that public funds for public projects cannot be used to favour one set of Jamaicans over another.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, perhaps reluctantly, had no choice but to fire him. After PNP President Mark Golding moved against Meadows, Warmington’s position became unsustainable. The prime minister did the only thing that he could have done in the circumstances. To have done otherwise, or to buy into the Warmy being Warmy as usual, would have further enraged the citizenry. After almost losing fulsomely the local government elections, to save Warmy would be a burden too great to bear going into the general election campaign, which has already started.

Meadows, Meadows, Meadows, wherefore art thou? Let me concede that Meadows is a not a dunce. He has served in the people’s Parliament and has demonstrated certain traits which, if properly trained, would make him into what you could call a good politician. He has had personal beef with the JLP and this eventually landed him in the PNP camp. There is no problem here, as politicians for one reason or the other do switch sides.

I have had occasion to warn young politicians to be very careful of their public statements, especially when they are on political platforms. I am especially hard on young politicians, not only because they represent the future but because one does not want them to pick up the bad habits of their older counterparts. Furthermore, the people of Jamaica deserve better than to be subjected to the condescending hogwash to which they are often inundated. They need to lift the conversation and help people to distil the issues rather than resorting to the gutter. On these metrics Meadows failed in his intemperate and asinine support of “chopping” the colloquial word for “scamming”, which has been a major contributor to violent deaths in the country.

There is no well-thinking Jamaican who could support his diatribe for he or she knows the harm that scamming has done to the country. To support this and elevate it to the level of a legitimate business which young people can use to earn a living is dastardly, however you look at it. Meadows has since apologised, but this did not prevent his party leader firing him. At the point of writing, Meadows has indicated that he was not going anywhere. He will remain as the constituency caretaker. Undoubtedly, he is counting on the support of his constituents in his defiance of the party and common sense. He is doubling down on the ridiculous, for this is a battle he cannot win.

It is clear that his apology was not cradled in sincerity or he would have seen the need to remove himself, recharge his political batteries, and hopefully return at a later date a changed, chastened, and humbler person. But alas!

Of greater concern to the Jamaican people must be an insistence that our political leaders offer candidates with the requisite probity to manage the country’s affairs. It is not enough to withdraw from the political process in frustration. Voting with our feet is not the answer.

By hook or crook (often the latter) the mechanisms of political governance have to be managed by those whom we elect. If we remain aloof from it and do not insist on reform, we will forever be governed by the likes of those who show us no respect and behave as if the resources of the country are their personal possessions. We must demonstrate that enough is really enough.

Flow or Slow

I had the unfortunate experience of having to go to the Flow office in Mandeville last Saturday. It was an experience in frustration, given the long wait, almost two hours, to get attention from the agents in the office. People wailed and complained about the long wait. There were about a dozen seats in the small space. People waited in a line outside and were admitted inside as seats became available, which, as I said, in my case it was almost two hours before anyone could get my seat.

One very perceptive customer, apparently to ease our frustration, suggested loudly that the name should be changed from “flow” to “slow”. This was met with hearty laughter and massive approval. I cannot say whether this office is the major Flow office in Mandeville. If it is, it is a source of great disrespect for the people of Mandeville and its environs who do business there. Surely, Flow can do better. As a start, they should have special seating arrangements for the elderly. If things do not change, perhaps the company should consider adopting the customer’s eminent suggestion of renaming itself “Slow”.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; The Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.