While speaking at a constituency conference in Westmoreland last weekend, Mark Golding, leader of the Opposition and president of the People’s National Party (PNP), gave the clearest indication yet that the party which he leads is not what political scholars call an “evident Government-in-waiting”.

“Evident Government-in-waiting,” many political scholars agree, practically means one which is serious, responsible, offering a coherent set of programmes and is able to step in at a moment’s notice with measurably better and oven-ready-type policies, which can be realistically funded, in a specific parliamentary cycle.

Golding became president of the PNP on November 7, 2020. Almost four years on, Golding has yet to present to Jamaica a clear, convincing, and fundable forecast of what our country would look like with a future PNP Administration.

This is a great harbinger. We have seen this horror show from 89 Old Hope Road several times: It’s called hide and seek. Its development and climax have always had near catastrophic consequences on, especially, the poor people of this country.

At the mentioned meeting, Golding bellowed that the Andrew Holness-led Administration would be unable to govern the country without Dr Nigel Clarke leading the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service.

I noted here last Sunday that Dr Clarke’s contribution to the steadying of Jamaica’s economic ship has been superb. “The best in Latin America and the Caribbean,” among other things, was how I described our finance and the public service minister in this space on June 23, 2024. I am, therefore, not totally surprised at Dr Clarke’s most recent ascendency.

All well-thinking Jamaicans will sincerely miss Dr Clarke when he leaves in October, but the fact is the Earth will continue to rotate on its axis, as it has for thousands of years, and I believe Jamaica will continue along her present economic, social, and political trajectory will continue to strive and thrive.

Those who have even a cursory understanding of the direction of our political tea leaves, doubtless, figured that Golding’s sky-is-falling tirade in Westmoreland last weekend was nothing more than his usual scaremongering.

One does not have to be a political Einstein to figure that Golding was making a special effort to play to the declining gallery of unsuspecting Jamaicans, and especially the increasingly smaller groups of rabid Comrades.

Why? The PNP’s annual conference is scheduled for next week. Golding has to excite, particularly the diehard Comrades. He, as we say in local parlance, needs a ‘forward’; meaning a political adrenaline boost — however, artificial.

Golding’s formulaic draw for political pyrotechnics, razzle-dazzle, and fake news is unsurprising to me. This is the nature of decades-old political gimmickry which has served to retard our national potential. Golding says he is new and different. I see little evidence that he is a rising star. I believe he is more of a shooting star like his predecessor, Dr Peter Phillips, who I predicted would be the first leader of one of our two major parties not to become prime minister of Jamaica.

My forecast is Golding will be the second. I said so three years ago. He continues to try his best to resurrect a near-moribund type of politics and regurgitate an unusable past which most of us are rapidly turning our backs on.

Consistent with the Western liberal democratic necessity of an evident Government-in-waiting, Golding needs to convince the country that, were the PNP to form the Administration in the future, he has a person(s) on his team who will do as superb a job as Dr Clarke has been recognised for locally, regionally, and internationally.

With just under 12 months before our 19th parliamentary elections become due, Golding also needs to answer some critical questions. His answers must be practical, time specific, and fundable. Citizens today will not be tricked into paying higher taxes.

The Holness Administration has served up for the last 7 years credible budgets without new taxes. That is now a new norm; one which benefits the average Jamaican. The days of political diversions, tomfoolery, and bait-and-switch are over. Golding needs to factor that reality into his calculations and provide answers to especially these 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?

And there is something else, Golding urgently needs to tell. Recall that questions regarding Golding’s dual citizenship started flying left, right, and centre after the PNP’s press conference on May 14, 2024. Incidentally, I believe the PNP has not had a press conference since then. I wonder why? Up to May 14, 2024 they had a presser at least one per week.

Anyway, after 42 days of dilly-dally, if not hide-and-seek, Golding told the country he would renounce his British citizenship. Has he done so? Today makes 81 days of dilly-dally. The matter of an update regarding whether Golding has completed or even started the process of renunciation is not a private matter; it is a public one. Golding put himself up to be prime minister of Jamaica. Jamaicans, therefore, have a right to know who he is. The country needs to be provided with evidence that Golding is delivering on his promise. Nothing short of that will do. Reportage in credible media say repeated efforts to get an update on Golding’s promised renunciation of his British citizenship have been greeted with stony silence. Why the secrecy? This is highly unacceptable for the country’s prime minister-in-waiting. Something just does not pass the new-car smell test here.

On the subject of tests, nature has a wonderful way of regenerating herself. That’s how she (nature) proves herself. Those who believe there will never be another Usain Bolt, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, etc, are right. Nature has a way of always producing brighter, faster, and stronger over time. National Hero Marcus Garvey told us, “Whatsoever things common to man, that man has done, man can do.” And Charles de Gaulle, French general and former president, famously said: “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”

Rooting for Kamala

No human being is indispensable. Maybe it was this reality which prompted President Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States of America, in a 1989 speech in front of schoolchildren in Iowa, at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, to forecast a female president.

School Child: “Mr Ford, what advice would you give a young lady wanting to become president of the United States?”

President Ford: “Well, I hope we do have a young lady become president of the United States. I can tell you how I think it will happen, because it won’t happen in the normal course of events. Either the Republican or Democrat political party will nominate a man for president and a woman for vice-president, and the woman and man will win. So we’ll end up with a president, a male, and a vice president, a female. And, in that term of office of the president, the president will die, and the woman will become president.” Will President Ford’s forecast be proved right?

I believe Vice-President Kamala Harris has the necessary skills to make America a better place economically, socially, and politically. Her opponent, former President Donald J Trump, has proved that he is a devotee of revenge politics. Trump has promised retribution for those who, he says, did not do their jobs, and as such allowed the Oval Office to be taken away from him in the presidential election of 2020.

Trump says he would be a dictator only on day one if he were re-elected. Those who believe him doubtless believe the Earth is flat, gravity does not exist, and that the sum of 1+1 is 11.

I am pretty confident, too, that those drunk on Trump’s moonshine are conveniently oblivious to the fact that: “A Manhattan jury has found two Trump Organization companies guilty on multiple charges of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records connected to a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation for top executives.” (CNN, December 6, 2022)

Certainly Trump’s acolytes are also blinded by the fact that, “Trump is now the first former US president with a criminal conviction, and the first major party candidate to run for the White House as a felon.” (BBC, May 27, 2024)

Consider this from The Washington Post of January 24, 2021: “When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency.

“On November 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win re-election. This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.”

The world has seen the mushrooming of far-right leaders like Trump in especially the last 30 years. Some political scholars say it’s just the cyclical nature of politics. “It will soon burn out itself,” they say. If that is so, I believe accelerants should be generously poured on that fire. How? All those who support democracy must get up and get out and vote against far-right fanatics. They must be confined to the political periphery, permanently. It is the right thing to do.

Far-right leaders, like France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Argentina’s Javier Milei, are not your regular garden variety political leaders. Orbán has mercilessly thwarted press freedom. Le Pen has overtly supported racist utterances. Meloni has put pressure on press freedom and women’s rights. And Milei is said to be South and Latin America’s salesman for far-right doctrinaire. These realities need to concern us in Jamaica.

I believe the weaponising of corrosive ‘bad mind’ is the primary reason for the rise in far-right fanatics. Their poster child is Donald J Trump, who is threatening to rip apart America at the core of her foundations. These realities must concern Jamaica. It is often said when America sneezes, Jamaica gets a cold; I would add Europe.

Here at home we see a rapid slump in the quality of public political discourse. This is a sign of hard-right techniques being forcefully inserted into our politics, I believe.

Worshippers of the lowest common denominator are aplenty on social media. Some sit anxiously waiting for the next incident that can be thumped into viral outrage. Where natural occurrences do not aid and abet their grubby designs and objectives, ‘outrage’ is manufactured. We must remain wide awake.

It is best to avoid those that are drunk on self-aggrandizement like the plague.