Mark Wignall | The enemy of the people

At the time years ago when the complaint arrived in my inbox, the politician was an elected representative, a member of the Cabinet, and a lawyer.

According to the complainant, in her private capacity, the politician had done legal work for the family on previous occasions, so she was quite familiar with the broad family connections. The specific complaint from the man centred around the allegation that the lady forged the signature of his dead grandfather. .

In the matter, the voice from the grave and his cold hand had transferred significant parcels of land to the very-much-alive, warm lawyer and political representative. The complaint said in his email that I was his last hope in recovering the lands. That’s when I saw troubles ahead.

Pressed by me, he said he had reported it to the police. Roadblock at every instance. I made contact with a senior police friend. After a few weeks we met and spoke about the matter over a few beers. There were worry lines between his eyes. “Mark, the message which came to me was to leave it alone. It was a matter not to be touched or disturbed.”

Over a matter of weeks and months, I avoided the complainant mostly by telling him lies like I am still waiting on a call from some imaginary so and so. One thing I knew I could never tell him was what my police friend told me.

After a few months, the man called me and accused ME of teaming up with the politician to help ‘tief him land.’

Outside of the fundamental rights and freedoms allowed us under the Constitution, the relationship between the people and the politicians is captured in, ‘The Cabinet as a whole must account to the people through Parliament for its actions.’ Which is another way of saying that the politicians must serve the people.

But in reality, a great abomination barges in that makes the politician lord and master and danger. Accounting to the people is the biggest, open con job perpetrated on the Jamaican people.

Let’s take this other politician, an elected representative and at times a member of his party’s Cabinet. Sometime ago, a young lady fancied him, and they eventually had an intimate encounter. She became pregnant.

She wanted the baby not because she was deeply in love with him, but because she had previously had a reproductive disorder or problem and had difficulty conceiving. He wanted her to have an abortion. She said no and assured him that she would not give the child his surname to embarrass him. Plus, as a self-employed person, her financial independence would free him up.

He offered her money and still insisted that she terminate the pregnancy. Again she refused. He despatched one of his criminal enforcers to ‘speak with her’. After she defied the badman, the politician sent men to shoot up her business place.

After hurriedly abandoning the business and skipping from parish to parish, she secured a visa and ran away. When we spoke last week, she was happy with her new family and her children. She had no intention of going public and calling his name but felt she needed to tell me about his true nature.

IF THE JLP CRUMBLES ...

‘Big lead for PNP’ as published by The Gleaner on April 30 is not a headline that anyone in the JLP would yearn to embrace. In explaining the painful eight-point lag of the JLP in the limp towards the back of the fowl coop, it stated, “For the first time in recent years, the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) has found itself with a notable lead over the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), according to the latest Don Anderson opinion poll.”

In the last few months, the JLP has been in a bad place democratically, so I would not expect any sudden burst from anyone there to announce that they will soon be sharing with the nation the key findings of the electoral autopsy of the February Local Government elections.

On election night, one of my key friends and confidential contact in the JLP sent me a text in response to mine, ‘“What is happening?” His response was, “We are doing so much good governance and not enough politics.”

Politics is simply (not that simple) the effective marketing of good governance and how well poor governance can be hidden or diverted.

The supreme problem facing the JLP at this time is that it will be forced to hitch a reverse gear to pick up and fix the bad bits while trying to lunge forward just to keep up with the momentum that the PNP is now enjoying.

The JLP is trapped in trying to determine if it changes its political model of governance, or must it step back, assess, and lose valuable time in going forward. The PR has to mesh with the Dr Nigel Clarke model.

That model? Leave the rock star Dr Clarke in his mode and make the governance team mobile enough to support those modalities. Leave the egos at the door.

JOKE TING DIS?

Too many of the young men in both gangs had guns to bring about the social sense and political efficiencies to make them give up those guns. So they were allowed to kill each other but do it mostly in their penned-off areas in downtown Kingston.

On the other hand, the key could be arrange a peace hype and keep a dance. Announce the peace. “Senior police,” said a bright young man in his 30s, ‘tell di man dem, if dem hear sey any man gwine diss di peace dem not coming to investigate nutten. Dem a come fi dun man.”

It has long been known that policing violence-ridden inner-city pockets calls for a fantasy to be sold to uptowners and the courts. That fantasy is that we allow poor people their rights, and we will keep them from storming your front gates.

The reality speaks differently. Many policemen are convinced that some poor people can only be controlled by regularly filled prescriptions of brutality.

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