Gordon Robinson | Lord deliver us

Jamaica abstained!

Maybe you didn’t hear me. JAMAICA ABSTAINED! “From what?” Big Boy asked in the back.

Lookie here. On October 28, 2026, a day that will live in infamy, after voting with the rest of the civilized world for 30 years in favour of a UN resolution calling on USA to end sanctions against Cuba, Jamaica abstained from voting. Like a whipped mongrel, Jamaica lapped its tail and hid from its master’s wrath.

Normally, on a Tuesday, readers could expect me to preface the day’s topic with a corny attempt at satire set in a fantasyland or around a domino table. But THIS is no joking matter.

I cannot…..

Jamaica’s Foreign Affairs Minister was quick off the mark to address a press conference immediately following the non-vote. I bet she knew what we were all thinking.

Jamaica bent the knee and sent home Cuban Doctors after fifty years of friendly collaboration on the say-so of Trump’s lapdog, Marco Rubio, descendant of a wealthy Cuban family that profited under Batista and fled when Castro took over. Jamaica bent its other knee and agreed, in secret, to accept hundreds of non-Jamaicans deported from USA for criminal offences. Details of the agreement meekly signed remain hidden.

Now Jamaica has bent a third knee and abandoned a regional neighbour – the one that repeatedly came to Jamaican health sector’s rescue by sending its excellently trained health-care workers to help us AND by training ours. I’m talking about the neighbour who sent tens of thousands of troops to fight Apartheid in Angola in 1975. THAT neighbour! Jamaica can’t even summon the backbone to support a non-binding UN Resolution calling for USA to cease nonsensical, outdated, malicious, brutal sanctions that have abused Cubans for 68 years?

How many more burgers will Jamaica eat aspiring to be J. Wellington Wimpy? How lower must Jamaica go to genuflect before new slave masters?

As reported by Gleaner (I refuse to keep watching these circuses live) Kamina explained: “We did not vote ‘against’ because we do not support unilateral action in accordance with the UN Charter…”

No need to tell us why Jamaica didn’t vote against, Kamina. Such a vote would’ve supported international atrocity. But, that you felt the need to explain why Jamaica didn’t vote against speaks volumes about the prickly rash your conscience seems to have developed.

“We do not support unilateral action” is spineless, supercilious sidetracking. Jamaica supports unilateral action all over the world. It’s the uncivilized indecent, indefensible, inhumane, degrading treatment of innocent Cubans unilaterally pursued by USA because it didn’t like what Castro did over six decades ago that you dare not tell us you support. But, if you don’t support it, why not vote for the resolution as Jamaica has done for 30 years?

“…,we did not vote ‘for’ because it is clear that continuing to do the same thing each year to support the resolutions, simplicita (sic) , with not only no improvement in the circumstances but in fact a deepening of the humanitarian crisis and suffering, this does not serve the benefit of the Cuban people””

So, it’s the resolution that’s harming the Cuban people? Surely you jest? But permit me a quick detour to chide lawyers who insist on using legal terms of art when speaking to non-lawyers who remain in the vast majority. As a result, Gleaner, who I don’t blame, misspelled simpliciter – legal gobbledygook for “without more”.

So, Jamaica made a radical shift in policy away from publicly deploring USA’s illegal, inhumane, cruel treatment of fellow humans in Cuba to saying about THAT atrocity “meh” because previously calling it out bore no result?

Really? Seriously? How does abstaining change previous results? Me, teacher! Previously Jamaica was an independent State with independent views. Now Jamaica changed. It’s acting as the new Caribbean puppet for a racist, xenophobic, jingoistic, narcissistic nation determined to own the Western Hemisphere. Don’t we understand that the same knife stick sheep…..?

And this government calls it “economic diplomacy”? Shame on Jamaica!

Thank God such a defeatist, cowardly approach wasn’t taken by Nelson Mandela who fought against Apartheid for 20 years and then spent a further 27 years in prison doing the same thing day after day; week after week; month after month; year after year until the inhumane, degrading, abomination called Apartheid was dismantled.

Thank God such a defeatist, cowardly approach wasn’t taken by Martin Luther King whose 13 years leading a civil rights movement was only ended by an Assassin’s bullet but whose fight continued for decades winning significant legislative changes in a racist USA including abolition of Jim Crow laws. Before he died, his perseverance forced Civil Rights Act passage.

These great men persisted despite seemingly intractable adversity. They kept on doing the same thing expecting that, one day, their efforts would bear fruit. And so they did. And Jamaica fought alongside anti-colonialists and humanitarians like Mandela and King.

Lord, deliver us from weak-kneed opportunism. Lord, deliver us from fear. Lord, lead us not into temptation. Lord deliver us!

Peace and Love.

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