Archive for the ‘Bruce Golding’ Tag
Life after Golding
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bruce Golding, crawford, damion, garrison, jamaica, PM, politics, youth
Comments (1) 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?
Jamaican crime policy
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bruce, Bruce Golding, Golding, jamaica, Prime Minister
Leave a Comment Are the JLP’s anti crime policies any different to the PNP’s? The crime rate has jumped up since they took over power (by some 22 per cent) so have there actually been any policy changes to account for this? I listened to a recent interview of Bruce Golding on the BBC (May 2008 on The World Today BBC World Service). He says that the crime has been carried over from the PNP, typical politician, blaming the previous adminstration – he outlines to get a working police force which has integrity, secondly he says they are employing a strategic approach to deal with the root causes of cirme – ie. poverty and getting young people into jobs to give them options away from crime.
Bruce Golding says they have set up an anti corruption arm of the police force and he says they have made 30 arrests so far and that this shows they are moving aggressivley on this. Anyone who spends more than five minutes in Jamaica quickly understands the corrupt police and the woefully inadequate measures to stamp it out. There may be planty of enquiries and supposed investigations but there are rarely any real outcomes.
In all this bad news, he tries to talk up the economy and says tourism is doing well and he talks up giving free access to schools and removing hospital charges.
