Jamaica Salt

Following Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s resignation announced 25th Sep, 2011 which was a long time coming, I’ve been thinking about if and when the political make up in Jamaica can ever change.  If someone charismatic and inspiring were to step forward onto the scene – Jamaica’s Nelson Mandela or Gandhi – and it doesn’t have to be a man – someone who can take the country onto a new path.

Bruce Golding 2008 - 2011

First, let me just say a couple of things about the resignation.  Any credibility that Golding may have had in making his exit speech, seem to ring hollow because it has taken so long to come about.  Deafeningly loud calls for his resignation were being made way back last year, when it emerged that he knew about the contacting of a law form to lobby against the US extradition request for Christopher Coke – a notorious crime lord currently pleading guilty to drug and gun charges.  Although Golding did offer his resignation at the time, it seemed a half hearted attempt to do so as his loyal party rejected the request, which he duly went along with.  There is an air of suggestion that he could not cling onto power any longer.

All this after the ill fated decision to storm Tivoli Gardens in a fruitless search for the drug don Christopher Coke at the expense of so many lives, not to mention the huge damage to Jamaica’s international reputation which will continue to be tainted for a very very long time to come.

Golding came to power with the help of edward seaga – the man tainted by links between crime dons and politicians when he was in power and garrison politics first came to the fore when guns and violence were exchanged for votes. He comes from the Jamaican political elite – his father was in politics.

So where is the new blood or are we just going to see more of the same?  People being groomed from the same stock with the correct links and access to power?  Here are a couple of youth leaders in action, Damion Crawford and then there’s also Generation 2000 (G2K) president Delano Seiveright.  Is there hope for anyone else to emerge from somewhere else entirely?  What about someone from Tivoli gardens?