Who is this Garfield Higgins? Where is he from? Which school did he attend? These were some of the inquiries made by a member of a dining party while at a posh restaurant in New Kingston.

The incident took place a few years after I started writing columns for this newspaper. A friend of mine and her husband sat within earshot of them.

“Social snobbery and classism are alive and well in Jamaica,” I said to her after hearing additional snippets of the group’s preoccupation at dinner.

I have said here more than once that some among us are mightily upset that they no longer control the levers which formally enabled them to determine what the majority think and how often. They had better get accustomed to this reality. It is an inconvenient truth that corrosive social snobbery and classism, put on steroids during slavery and colonialism, still abound.

There are some among us who fervently believe that the Tainos bequeathed Jamaica to them and they only are entitled to ‘run things’. They had better get it into their heads that those days are over. Jamaica is our country!

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Uncomfortable realities

The People’s National Party (PNP) has never separated itself from this frightening dictum: “We believe that it is best for the PNP to form the Government; therefore, anything that will lead or cause us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.” It was enunciated on radio in the 90s by the PNP’s now Chairman Emeritus Robert “Bobby” Pickersgill. Anything, excludes nothing. Anything includes refusing to concede when the duly constituted authority responsible for the overall administration and management of elections in this country declares that the PNP has lost.

Said the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ): “With all the ballots counted, the result is that the JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] won the election for the control of the local authorities, with seven of the local authorities, and the PNP [People’s National Party] won six of the local authorities inclusive of the Portmore Municipality.”

Our 17th local government elections since universal adult suffrage in 1944 was held more than a month ago. Up to the time of writing Mark Golding, president of the PNP, had not conceded. In my The Agenda column, ‘Danger! Unwillingness to lose’, earlier this month, I detailed the clear and present danger to our still-developing democracy of Golding’s refusal to accept defeat. It is obvious Golding is protecting his political hide.

I am not surprised that the PNP is increasingly embracing anti-democratic behaviours. Steps down this slippery slope often include unscrupulous, overt, and covert attacks on political opponents (read enemies), critical media, and vulnerable groups which are not supportive. These assaults invariably also take the forms of elaborate and subtle measures to economically suffocate political opponents, threats of and physical harm, prolonged psychological and emotional torment, defaming opponents with the help of captured media, resurrecting of class and racial differences and misogynistic traducing, among others.

Some eminent political scholars say misogynistic and related assaults on the most vulnerable are among the final steps in the “chipping away of critical democratic pillars”. I agree.

Only those who are voluntarily blind would not have noticed this awful beast eating away at our democratic foundation.

Recall that while he was on the political hustings in Portland Eastern, Damion Crawford, then a candidate for the PNP, spewed what was appropriately described by many well-thinking Jamaicans as “classist”, “sexist”, and “misogynist” diatribe about his political opponent Ann-Marie Vaz.

Among other things, The Gleaner, March 4, 2019, reported: “If you look at potential, the furthest this lady will go is Mrs Vaz. If you look at potential, how far can I go and how [far] will you come with me?” Crawford stated, also declaring that, “If this lady beat me, it will be a travesty!”

At the time when Crawford made these comments he was a vice-president of the PNP and scientific polls had indicated that he was the most popular politician in the PNP. The political trashing which Ann-Marie Vaz and the JLP handed to the PNP in the Portland Eastern by-election should have served as a teaching moment for Norman Manley’s party.

Have they learned? I don’t see verifiable evidence.

People seldom change, many behaviourists tell us. After Crawford was subjected to sustained and overwhelming public pressure for misogynistic outburst, he apologised. But, the contents of a ‘leaked voice note’ which gushed unto the public pavement soon after revealed that Crawford’s apology was done maybe more so to assuage public anger and less as a genuine act of remorse.

The contents of the mentioned voice note revealed the pursuit of power for power’s sake, obsession with credentialism, grandiose ideas of academic privilege, simultaneous disdain for the thinking abilities of the so-called unlettered, chronic mean-spiritedness, and ham-handed political proclivities on steroids.

Many behaviour specialists say the best index of how people will treat others is located in how they treat their own kin. I agree.

Recall how former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was disgracefully pushed out of the PNP after she was defeated by Andrew Holness and the JLP in the February 25, 2016 General Election.

In my The Agenda on February 17, 2017 I noted, among other things: “Those with eyes and ears to the political ground and reliable sources like the John Chewits, Bananaquits and Black-Bellied Plovers know that the PNP’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held in Hatfield, Manchester, on Sunday, February 5, 2017, witnessed a bitter and toxic explosion from Simpson Miller. In her rage she went off script and emptied her political soul.

Said she: “Like how you glad fi si mi out, don’t be glad to call mi when you need mi to win election.” She did tell the NEC that she was pushed and nobody has to tell her to leave. Simpson Miller, at the Hatfield ‘hanging’ meeting, castigated Comrades saying: “I worked like a donkey for this movement.” At the Hatfield political OK Corral, Simpson Miller fumed that some in the PNP were party to leaks of internal information. The former prime minister fired salvos at men who, she said, “don’t like female leadership”.

I think these awful episodes are connected. They show a PNP that is teetering under the weight of small-mindedness and democratic devolution.

Evidence of recent decay

Some will doubtless yell that these incidents are in the past and buried in a time when internal feuding was at its peak in the PNP. They will conveniently shout that the mentioned sordid episodes have no relevance to today’s PNP. Common sense and recent evidence do not agree with their opportunistic logic.

Those who are on social media would have seen the vicious attacks on Venesha Phillips, who recently divorced the PNP. Her reproductive health was paraded and attacked. This nasty denigration was mixed with a rancid onslaught on her gender. I don’t for one moment think these attacks were isolated. I believe they were carefully packaged and catapulted onto social media platforms. They are consistent with democratic devolution in the PNP.

As I see it, the frightful attacks on the Speaker of the House of Representatives Juliet Holness earlier this month are not unconnected to the democratic descent in the PNP. All are connected.

The unjustified references to Holness as the wife of the Prime Minister by Opposition Leader Mark Golding seemed identical to Crawford’s template of attack on Ann-Marie Vaz.

How so? Vaz was relegated to housewife. In a similar vein, a barefaced attempt was made to minimise and delegitimise Holness’s functions as Speaker. I believe all well-thinking Jamaicans need to wake up and see these assaults for what they are.

The PNP, in its desperation to gain State power, is chipping away at one of the sacred pillars of Western liberal democracy, the protection of women, who earned the right to vote after tremendous struggle and sacrifice well into the 1920s, in numerous countries.

This fact is vital. This excerpt from a release by the Integrity Commission of Jamaica substantiates that Golding’s attacks on Holness are unwarranted. The IC said, among other things, “In the public interest, the commission wishes to advise and to confirm that all of its investigations and annual reports, that have so far been submitted to Parliament for tabling, have in fact been tabled. None is outstanding.” (March 22, 20240

Hugely underwhelming

Some noted political experts posit that when major political parties begin to regularly find themselves in the losing column they invariably descend to the lowest common denominator. I believe that descent is a big part of the explanation for Golding’s attack on Holness during his budget debate presentation earlier this month. I believe political desperation gushed from Golding’s speech.

Here is an uncomfortable truth. To some among us the Speaker does not fit into the Drumblair (upper crust) ecosystem. In local parlance, the ‘Tapanaris’, which refers to the upper classes of Jamaican society. She hails from humble beginnings.

Some claim Golding was scoring prolifically during his budget presentation. Even those with a modicum of understanding of especially local politics can easily figure why they say so. The fact is Golding is no George Headley (famous Jamaican and West Indian all-rounder.) But for one instance Golding did not provide any evidence of how he would fund even partially his trailer load of promises. That is not good cricket.

“I will… I will,” means nothing if you cannot viably say how you are going to fully fund your plans to make them into reality. Golding speech, to me, was a nothing burger. It was full of lame bromides and lacked even basic economic lucidity. For me, it did not even qualify as a good game of bush cricket. After three years of criss-crossing Jamaica and listening to the people, as the PNP says, Golding is yet to provide viable answers to the following questions.

1) Where are his new and/or better ideas on how to grow the Jamaican economy faster?

2) Where are his new and/or better ideas to remedy the long-standing matters of social decline?

3) Where are his new and/or better ideas to fix the choking issue of major crimes, and murder in particular?

4) Where are his new and/or better ideas to better remedy the long-standing challenges in education?

5) Where are his new and/or better ideas to cauterise the Herculean problems associated with squatting, and insufficient access to affordable and decent housing?

We need to be convinced that the Opposition’s ideas are ‘fundable’.