Letter of the Day | Ideological positioning and principled action

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Contributing to the recent Budget Debate, Prime Minister Holness defended decisions taken during his administration by forging a thoroughly legitimate comparison between Alexander Bustamante’s ‘We are with the West’ posture and Michael Manley’s 1970s Democratic Socialism stance.

Contemplation also of the leadership provided by those former heads of government would reveal that, neither being faultless, they showed deep respect for the hallowed demarcation between ideological positioning and principled action in the people’s best interests.

No evidence exists suggesting that while thousands of black Haitians in this 21st century were abhorrently being rendered stateless by the Dominican Republic authorities, inducing vigorous regional and international condemnation, either ‘The Chief’ or ‘Joshua’ would have invited the Dominican Republic’s president here to bestow upon him Jamaica’s highest honour reserved for foreigners.

Neither Alexander Bustamante nor Michael Manley would have embraced an entreaty which would signal disrespect for sister African states by Jamaica’s engineered attempt at denying one of their number the timely assumption of the Commonwealth Secretary General chair by curiously challenging the incumbent without any proper foundation.

Bustamante and Manley, steeped in trade unionism, would guard against Jamaicans bearing the stain of ingratitude by refusing to turn their backs on Venezuela’s unsurpassed Petro-Caribe generosity.

Their forthright response to such solicitation would be that moving through the countryside, there was the saying that, “ungrateful worse than obeah”, and at best, they would hesitatingly abstain, taking no side.

Jamaica’s unexplained non-registered United Nations vote, markedly, concerning an issue of reputed genocide would not sit well with them.

Not many would wager against either of them showing earnest concern for the unprecedented ‘eliminating’ of non-threatening boatmen in Caribbean waters or life-threatening energy blockade suffocating neighbouring Cuba.

Each would readily fulfil Jamaica’s treaty obligation to transition to the CCJ, dutifully providing all citizens with the transformative privilege of unbridled access to final justice.

Memorably, despite earlier clear demonstration of a political federation being repugnant to the ideological frame of a Bustamante-led JLP, that landmark people-centred decision for Jamaica to subscribe to a regional final court was taken by the Hugh Shearer-led government during ‘The Chief’s’ lifetime in 1970, ‘Joshua’ being opposition leader.

The convention is that, regardless of ideological leaning, certain timeless principles and standards constitute guardrails of the proper practice of democratic governance and comity of nations, and gratifyingly, there is no disclosure of such deviations during the incumbency of Alexander Bustamante or of Michael Manley.

A.J. NICHOLSON