Game-changing Golding
Published:Thursday | September 26, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Wagon-circling responses from the People's National Party (PNP) government and supporters, to the Richard Azan-Spaldings Market story and other 'scandals', including Trafigura and the ongoing Kern Spencer case, make it clear that Jamaica may be more indebted to former Prime Minister Bruce Golding than we might care to admit.
We know that 'political corruption, especially, is not always as "clear-cut" or "black and white" as the contractor general, and many persons other than the PNP, consider the Richard Azan situation to be. And the PNP's defensive arguments are not all without merit, though the way to hell is said to be "paved with good intentions".
Note the PNP's strident, on-going efforts to disregard then to steamroll and turn back the tide of outraged public opinion calling for Mr Azan's resignation, in the interest of "transparency, accountability and good governance", at least.
This, I believe, is an indication of just how much more difficult it could be for any sector of the society to counter or reverse any action or policy promoted by the PNP, if Mr Golding had not set the bar of public accountability and non-corruption as high as he did - even to his own apparent detriment and resulting political advantage to the PNP.
It may well be that in a world where the unregenerate human "heart" is said to be "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9), it was "foolish" for Mr Golding to have acknowledged error and then to actually "resign" as prime minister, .
It may also be that, as one PNP supporter on TVJ News suggested, neither corruption nor "crime naw go stop till 'God' come". (She does not know, of course, that the Creator is already here, and has never left. But that's another story).
But by fulfilling his role as a prime minister who did 'right', thus representing and demonstrating 'righteousness', he has also been used to help us as a society to more easily recognise the difference between what is "right" and what is NOT - morally/politically.
The question remains: which will we choose individually?
Also, do we understand that "... neither does corruption inherit incorruption"(1 Corinthians 15:50).
C. ANTHONY