JAMAICA Chamber of Commerce (JCC) president Milton Samuda believes it is imperative that Jamaica’s political leaders be “empowered” or “forced”, if needs be, to become transformational. Otherwise, they should step aside, by his reckoning.

On the weekend, the JCC head, while speaking at the annual general meeting of Soroptimist International of Jamaica at the Alhambra Inn in Kingston, described the leaders of the two main political parties as throwbacks to a style of politics that has long plagued Jamaica and which has hindered the country’s development.

“We must help the Hon Bruce Golding to locate and return to us the Bruce of the NDM whose message of fundamental change made the JLP attractive to those seeking change,” said Samuda. “Instead we have Bruce of the JLP, sounding more in sync with the old-style politics he once eschewed when he wore blue.”

Samuda’s reference was to Golding’s departure from the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) in 1995 to co-found the National Democratic Movement (NDM), which uses blue as its signature colour. However, he returned to the JLP on the eve of the 2002 general elections, which the party lost. Eventually, he became JLP leader in 2005 on the retirement of Edward Seaga.

In his address on the weekend, Samuda also took aim at Opposition Leader and President of the People’s National Party (PNP) Portia Simpson Miller, saying: “We must help the Most Hon Mrs Portia Simpson Miller to locate and return to us the ‘Fire Brigade Portia’. The woman who, on a point of principle, stood against her colleagues in Parliament. That was the Portia who fired the imagination and garnered broad support. Not the Portia who later melted into the ageing fabric of PNP leadership.”

In April 2004 when she was the local government minister, Simpson Miller helped hand the JLP, then in Opposition, a moral victory by abstaining from a vote on an Opposition resolution decrying the under-funding of the fire services. The motion was defeated by Government MPs.

When Golding took over the mantle of leadership in the JLP, many Jamaicans thought he would bring with him the reforms that he touted over the years. Among those reforms was a call for the dismantling of garrison constituencies and the politics associated with them.

Fast-forward to today and the JLP is undergoing pressure from the Opposition and key private sector groups over the Government’s handling of the US request for the extradition of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the strongman of Tivoli Gardens, which is located in Western Kingston — Golding’s constituency.

“We keep being told in tones of accommodation that we must be realistic about garrison constituencies,” Samuda went on. “I wish to suggest to you that it is precisely that realistic approach which has allowed garrisons to not just survive, but thrive to the extent that they now threaten our national well-being.”

“Garrisons must go,” he declared.

Samuda is proposing that the private sector pull financial support from the parties while garrisons exist and “find the resources to assist the state” in replacing ‘dons’ with law and order.

“First, we must stop the hypocrisy of donating to a politics which fosters garrisons while saying we uphold law and order,” Samuda added. “If we cannot support foul-mouthed DJs who denigrate women from public stages, then we ought not to support well-spoken politicians who espouse visionless division from public platforms.

“In all of this, we must insist that the Government of the day provide the environment in which private enterprise and private initiative and private entrepreneurship are enabled and not obstructed; are facilitated and not impeded,” he added.