Despite the hypocrisy of blinkered Bunting, both PNP and JLP needed Dudus

Gordon Robinson, Contributor

Some persons believe the Dudus saga is now behind us and we should move on to more important matters like exorbitant electricity costs and negative economic growth. I'm not a member of that club. In my opinion, the Dudus affair is the most significant in Jamaica's recent history.

I believe that we must use the revelations from this sordid passage to help craft a better Jamaican politics. If we don't, we can forget ever being able to reduce electricity costs or generate growth. So long as our national resources can be used to fund criminal enterprises, our world will be forever unbalanced and our security forces forever impotent. We won't have an economy worth mentioning.

So, those of you who want me to stop writing about Dudus will be disappointed. The good news is that alternative reading material abounds. Feel free to go there instead. I can't. I won't.

Foot-in-mouth error

Among the few of you happy that I'm continuing to flog the Dudus horse, the vast majority are People's National Party (PNP) sycophants who expect that my articles on Dudus will provide fodder to bash the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and return your beloved party to power.

It's time to mash down that lie with a little help from the PNP's own Peter Bunting. As one of the many square pegs the PNP has tried to squeeze into round shadow Cabinet holes, Mr Bunting, both feet firmly inserted in his mouth, delivered himself of a harangue one could only take seriously if it were meant to be an audition for the Hypocrite of the Year Award.

Exhibiting the sort of rare genius normally reserved for discoverers like Columbus, Bunting revealed the oh-so-brilliant theory that Coke couldn't have achieved his position of influence without the "active support of co-conspirators" in both the public and private sectors. What other sector is there, Peter? Presenting publicly the innocence of Bambi and the concern of John the Baptist, Bunting pontificated: "The society must resolve to expose these co-conspirators and bring them to justice, wherever possible. This is a minimum requirement if we are to maintain any shred of credibility within the community of nations."

"Her: Oh, Doctor, I'm in trouble.

Him: Well, goodness, gracious me.

Her: For every time a certain man

Is standing next to me,

A flush comes to my face

And my pulse begins to race.

It goes boom boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom

Boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom-boom-boom."

Well, goodness, gracious me!

Let's review some history. In 1992, when Lester Lloyd Coke died, nobody knew who the 22-year-old Dudus was. During the 1990s, companies controlled by Dudus benefited directly or indirectly from the award of very lucrative government contracts. Dudus thrived and grew into the fiend we now know and most Jamaicans fear while the PNP was in government with the responsibility to protect us from monsters like him.

Regardless of the bureaucratic circumstances permitting registration of contractors, if any company controlled by him was, in fact, duly registered, it would have been a facile abdication of responsibility to administratively register companies and then hand out government contracts like free candy to companies with possible connections to organised crime.

We're now discovering that Dudus had a criminal record in the United States. Why did local due diligence fail to uncover either this or his clandestine connection to many 'legitimate' enterprises? Were there any 'co-conspirators' in the public sector then, Peter?

I don't accept this casual, PNP propaganda-driven notion that Dudus was a JLP don. He was certainly a Tivoli Gardens don and Tivoli Gardens has always been central to the JLP's election efforts. I believe that no JLP member could have thought about representing West Kingston without Dudus' seal of approval in his capacity as Tivoli Gardens don.

An educated don

In deciding whether Dudus was a JLP don, or whether the JLP was Dudus' captive, readers must remember former MP Edward Seaga's inability to control the younger Coke, becoming so frustrated that he resorted to delivering a list of 13 "troublemakers" to the then police commissioner, Colonel Trevor MacMillan. Christopher 'Dudus' Coke was at the top of that list. According to Seaga in a recent CVM interview, "I offered a $25,000 reward to find his whereabouts. And what did the police do with that list? MacMillan, the commissioner, said it was on a piece of dirty paper."

Dudus became a successful don. But Dudus was an educated young man. He's his father's son, but brought a completely different perspective to the donmanship business. I believe Dudus understood clearly that the new order of things would benefit him only if politicians needed him, not the other way around. Influential members of the private sector had long ago decided that supporting both parties was the preferred path to business success, and I believe Dudus watched and learned that, in the modern underworld, identical rules applied.

I don't believe that Dudus aligned himself to a single political party while legitimate businessmen thrived regardless of who was in power. My usually reliable sources tell me that Dudus' chief partner in 'business' was a well-known PNP activist who is now in the US disguised as Cooperating Witness No. 1 (CW1 in the notorious indictment).

In the end, I believe Dudus achieved his objective. Both parties needed him more than he needed either of them. Notice how the JLP seemed to fight harder and mobilised more human and financial resources trying to prevent Dudus' extradition than Dudus himself, who simply fled, hid and, once he was in custody, meekly threw in the towel.

Dudus seemed not to need any particular political party to be in power for his businesses to grow, and he was just as popular in PNP strongholds as he was in Tivoli. Readers must remember that, in the early stages of the extradition saga when ungrateful heretics like your humble scribe were calling unsuccessfully for the law to take its course, the first public demonstration mounted on Dudus' behalf was in Hannah Town. Not a single Labourite participated.

It's significant that, for a long time while Peter Phillips played the role of PNP Lone Ranger speaking out against the Government's machinations and becoming a target of political graffiti, the PNP leader refused to make any significant comment, actually once telling a reporter who queried her on the issue to ask the prime minister. Why wouldn't she speak?

"Him: How often does this happen?

When did the trouble start?

You see, my stethoscope is bobbing

To the throbbing of your heart.

Her: What kind of man is he

To create this allergy?

It goes boom boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom

Boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom-boom-boom.

Boom boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom."

Well, goodness, gracious me!

Now do you understand why Phillips dared not tell a single member of his Cabinet about the MOUs? The uncomfortable truth is that the links with organised crime are so pervasive that they engulf both political parties and no one knows who is vulnerable. Even completely innocent party officials may be fearful of speaking out because of the possible backlash from constituents - yet another reason to separate the duties of MP and Cabinet member.

So, Peter Bunting, please try to resist the almost irresistible urge to use Dudus as a political point-scoring football. Unlike the confused Indian doctor and his coy patient portrayed by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren in the featured song, you aren't in the midst of sweet romance. It's real Jamaican political life and it's your responsibility to change it. It's time to throw away the cute sound bites and try some hard home truths. If it's co-conspirators you want to find, start looking within your own organisation. Then, maybe, you can start pointing fingers elsewhere.

Dudus isn't a JLP problem. He's a poster boy for what's wrong with Jamaican politics. He's the best advertisement of our need to strip constituency representatives of all executive power. His case must be the catalyst for fundamental change so that our politics can never again give birth to such evil. It's up to us. We can keep flogging the so-called dead horse that is the Dudus affair until it ignites a change in our politics. Or we can leave it alone, hope change comes anyway, and move on to discuss exorbitant electricity costs and negative growth.

Peace and love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.