KINGSTON, Jamaica— Opposition Leader Mark Golding has responded to the increasing racial rhetoric from members of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), being directed at him.

The latest insults were levelled by the cantankerous Member of Parliament for St Catherine South Western, Everald Warmington, who has consistently hurled insults at the opposition leader.

Speaking last Thursday at the JLP’s Kingston Western constituency conference at the Tivoli Gardens High School, Warmington declared that he would rather die than be led by a white man.

“No white man can lead me,” Warmington shouted, as he addressed a cheering crowd.

The controversial MP, a former minister in the Andrew Holness cabinet, even said those “a-hole over deh so,” in reference to supporters of the People’s National Party (PNP), who, he said, had opposed former Prime Minister Edward Seaga because he was a white man.

“So why yuh attack Edward Seaga and say him white and because dis yah white man (Golding) come, yuh say him can lead Jamaica. Over mi dead body,” Warmington bellowed. He suggested that Golding should be put on a banana boat and sent back to the United Kingdom where he stands a chance of becoming prime minister in a country that has changed five prime ministers in a relatively short time.

Asked to respond to the latest attacks on him at a PNP press conference on Tuesday, Golding said “Jamaica is a society that has a motto ‘Out of many, One people’. I am a born Jamaican, I didn’t choose my skin colour as no one chooses their skin colour. I am a loyal Jamaican, a patriotic Jamaican and I’m giving of myself to serve the people of Jamaica”.

The PNP president said it was a sad turn of events and expressed disappointment in the leadership of the JLP, which he said, has “tacitly encouraged this kind of behaviour”. “To me it indicates a lack of principle on their part,” he added.

The opposition leader pointed out that Jamaica was part of the family of nations and that we live in a world that is interconnected. He said other countries and other races are looking on “and saying how is it that the government of Jamaica is allowing a junior minister or a former minister and two MPs to be using racial taunts and slurs as a source of attacking a political opponent”.

“It’s very bad form and it’s unfortunate for Jamaica and it really needs to stop,” Golding said. “Attempts to use my colour as a political battering ram smacks of desperation on their part,” he asserted.

Describing the attacks on him as unprecedented, Golding said “I don’t think any political leader has faced what I’ve been facing in his regard. And it is because they see the tide has turned against them and the people of Jamaica are fed up with them; the dishonesty, the lack of integrity and a government that has pursued policies that don’t benefit the people in a direct way. So people have lost hope, people want change”.

Golding said he was the embodiment of that change as the leader of the opposition “and therefore they’re trying to attack me”. The PNP president said he was also flattered in that “all they can really attack me on is the colour of my skin”.

Golding reminded that he grew up in Jamaica, his wife is African-Jamaican “a beautiful woman, my children are born in Jamaica and I’m a proud Jamaican citizen”.

After coming under some pressure earlier this year, Golding renounced his British citizenship which he acquired at birth, his father having been a British national. Of note is that citizens of the Commonwealth are allowed to sit in the Jamaican Parliament.