JAMAICA LABOUR Party (JLP) Senator Bruce Golding yesterday admitted that the party made serious mistakes and suffered great failures during the 1960s, but had learnt from these mistakes.
Speaking at a seminar hosted by Generation 2000 (G2K) at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, the former JLP chairman and general secretary said the party now has a greater understanding of what is necessary to properly run a country.
Senator Golding pointed to the party's acceptance of police brutality, human rights abuses, political tribalism and even the persecution of rastafarians as several key issues that mar the history of the JLP, which has been out of government for the past 14 years.
"That's something which today, given the Labour Party's posture on human rights, would not have been accommodated," he said, while making reference to former Prime Minister Hugh Shearer's "unfortunate injunction that he gave to police in terms of how they should deal with gunmen."
Mr. Shearer was Prime Minister of Jamaica from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
"We've learned over time, that in managing the affairs of a country you cannot be concerned just about economic investment, growth and activity and so on. Critical to governance is the question of human rights and justice. That has become a fundamental platform on which the JLP rests," Senator Golding told the gathering of university students, who listened intently as he, Senator Anthony Johnson, Senator Dwight Nelson and party leader Edward Seaga contributed to the seminar.
During his contribution, Mr. Seaga said that the Jamaican Constitution must be extended to deal with abuses with which other constitutions are unconcerned, for example victimisation.
PIONEERING WORK
"To that end it was the pioneering work of the JLP which has produced a Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms to safeguard the Jamaican people," he said.
"The debate is still to come on these issues and others to strengthen the hands of 'we the people' in contrast to the existing structure which protects and licenses 'we the government'," the JLP leader said. He added that "it is in the reduction of power and resolution of whose hands ultimate power will reside that the new dynamic of a truly free people will evolve."
Under the theme 'The JLP Then and Now: 60 Years of Nation Building', the speakers were examining the contributions made by the JLP since it was formed on July 8, 1943, to the development of the nation.
