Women tackle Warmington: Female media practitioners call for Golding to take action against former MP

Scores of women attached to the local media have joined to demand that Prime Minister Bruce Golding take action against former parliamentarian Everald Warmington for his "offensive" treatment of CVM news anchor Kerlyn Brown during a live television interview last Tuesday evening.

Warmington told Brown to "go to hell" when he was asked to respond to a question about his reasons for remaining a member of the House of Representatives since 2007, despite knowing his pledge of allegiance to a foreign country had made him an unfit candidate.

In a letter penned to Golding yesterday, more than 60 women working in a wide cross-section of Jamaican media organisations expressed their deep outrage over recent offensive statements by Warmington, which they found particularly demeaning and degrading of Jamaican women.

As a result, the group called on the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader not to permit Warmington to be nominated as candidate for the JLP in the by-election scheduled for April 4.

"This would be a signal that you represent a higher standard of political conduct, and that you support our view that the people of South West St Catherine deserve a member of parliament who shows a high level of respect to women, to all Jamaican citizens, and to our national institutions that so far, Mr Warmington has consistently failed to demonstrate," the group charged.

Further offensive remarks

The professionals further added: "Subsequent to that exchange, Mr Garfield Burford, manager, news and current affairs at CVM Television (Ms Brown's direct supervisor), called Mr Warmington to express his personal concern about the inappropriate comment and to enquire as to what could possibly be a justification."

The women said they had been advised by Burford that Warmington made further offensive remarks directed at Brown in that conversation.

They argued that Warmington has had a long history of offensive verbal assaults on the media, and, despite leaders of the party having to apologise for him from time to time, they could not recall any occasion when he has apologised for his own abusive behaviour.

The professional women said this was totally unacceptable as Warmington's unwarranted comments demeaned and degraded them on International Women's Day, and it cannot be left alone.

"As prime minister of Jamaica and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, you cannot accept nor endorse Mr Warmington's comments to either Ms Brown or Mr Burford, and so we call on you to take action to show your disapproval," the group declared.