Mark Wignall | A deportee, a don, a triangle, boom!

I met Clear Polish in 2015. He was on a high unlike most of the deportees I knew. He was physically imposing and liberally splotched with tattoos. The only time I imposed on his personal space was to tell him that I found his tattoos distasteful. Big mistake.

About seven of his friends were seated around him, and they all grew up in the time of Vybz Kartel when bleaching black skin clashed with the bipolar position of wanting to colour it afterwards with images was all the vogue.

I was forced to apologise to them as they tore into my argument. Plus there was a lot more I wanted to know. Polish told me that it was the incarceration system in Philadelphia that taught him to read and write plus certification in plumbing. In Jamaica, Polish began by driving an almost new car and packing it with pretty girl models. And the Hennessy was freely flowing.

In one year, it all evaporated. No car, no Hennessy, and obviously no female playthings. But Polish morphed into other dangerous ambitions. He was with the boss’s wife while the boss was abroad. Then the boss suddenly arrives and shoots at Polish. He is forced to disappear for a while.

He gets a job at another dead-end point of employment, and while he was there, he sparks a relationship with the girlfriend of the area don. When his friends beg him to end the relationship, he boasts, “Him sey him a don and a get bun.” Then he almost screams in laughter.

The don finds out everything and knows that someone has to die to protect his honour. He sends out the word. A few weeks later, a 19-year-old young man, weak minded and doomed to many horrors before life entombs him, goes to the don and tells him that Polish is at a particular place and has been there for over and hour.

The chance is that he is relaxed and may be there for another hour. The don hands him the gun and says to him: “Is you si him. Go fix it up!”

The weak-minded youngster pumps six shots into Polish’s head and neck. The chapter ends.

Four more in that group remain, as far as I know, keeping their noses clean and not operating on the wrong side of the law. One told me that it was Newark’s incarceration system that made him literate. He didn’t do too well in getting a skill, but he walks in quick stops and starts.

“Di two big American warders kick mi in mi back fi bout 20 minutes and sey, ‘This will guarantee that you will never run away from anyone. Ever’.”

MARK GOLDING TRYING TO BE ROOTS

Those who are close to the People’s National Party (PNP) president will tell you that Golding is genuinely a ‘roots man,’ meaning that he is an uptown man who walks among ganja smokers and feels comfortable seated on a low log eating dumplings floating in stew chicken.

PNP President Mark Golding recently spoke from a PNP podium and implored his supporters to “get wicked” on the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government. Or was it just purely the JLP? I think we who are close to politics and politicians know that Golding was trying to mulch around the plants of his new roots.

In the 1990s, PNP President and Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, a black-skinned man, aimed a very pointed political barb at the JLP leader, Eddie Seaga, then in the very first part of his long opposition run.

P.J. said quite correctly in prose that he could step down from a political podium and walk among the people and he would blend in perfectly. Not exactly what he said but what was meant to be conveyed. In political terms it was a low blow.

At a time in that same political period of the 1990s to 2000s when the many arms of the PNP government were hitching their extra large wagons to the stars of corruption, Seaga, the man who could never quite escape his skin colour in Jamaican politics, tried to link P.J. Patterson to a scandal bag of corruption.

In time, all that could be heard was Seaga, the detestable purveyor of all things Tivoli and a white-skinned man calling P.J. Patterson, a black man, a black scandal bag. That only extended the JLP’s long stay in opposition.

DELICACY OF SKIN COLOUR NOT DEAD

In the matter of skin colour among Jamaican political leaders, the ‘high brown’ and white have always enjoyed a special position. Behind the scenes one will be told that those who are high brown are closer to the default setting for political leaders than those who are overdosed on melanin.

Bobby Montague happens to be one of my favourite politicians, but even without the negative embellishments that have come close to him for some time, I could hardly see Montague, a coal-black man becoming leader of the JLP. Would the funders blow their collective gaskets?

Prime Minister Andrew Holness puzzles me on the spectrum of skin colour. He is neither fitting neatly into brown nor can he be remotely considered as high brown. So on that scale, where does he fit? Neutral? In the 1970s the governing PNP pulled a skilful bit of political strategy by blanking out Eddie Seaga in the political campaign to follow.

The party launched a song that extolled the birth of its leader, the ‘high brown’ Michael Manley.

“My father born yah … my leader born yah.” Eddie Seaga was born in Boston, Massachusetts. As much as both political parties are always into the business of blowing hot and cold air on decency in politics, if leading up to the next elections situations are more critically aligned and if both parties should believe that the chances of them winning are the same as them losing, things could get nasty.

The PNP has the most to lose because it is still supposed to be a socialist party while being led by a capitalist captain whose only comparison to one of the main heroes of the PNP, Michael Manley. is some similarity in skin colour.

It may take Mark Golding another lifetime to grasp the magic of Michael Manley and become it.

- Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.