Bruce Golding's 'Labour' pains
Published:Sunday | May 29, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
For the last three years, the month of May has proven to be nightmarish for Prime Minister Bruce Golding, his Government and the people of Jamaica.
For three consecutive Labour Day holiday periods, the Golding government has been forced to 'toil' in a strikingly different manner as controversies each year cast a shadow over the activities.
It was on the eve of Labour Day 2009 - May 22 to be precise - that seven wards of the state perished and many others injured in an inferno at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre for girls in St Ann.
The wards were mere teenagers, who had, somehow, wandered astray or, perhaps it was the fault of their errant parents - when their lives were cut short by the unmerciful blaze.
If one thought that the Armadale tragedy of May 2009 was dreadful, Labour Day 2010 proved to be even more devastating as it flaunted the spectacle of another man-made catastrophe.
An extradition request for the reputed don of Tivoli Gardens, Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, nine months earlier lit the fuse, and fuelled some fiery exchanges between Kingston and Washington that led eventually to a full-scale police-military incursion into the community.
Semblance of normality
Seventy three civilians died, police and soldiers were injured, others are still missing and scores were wounded over a three-day period, when the sounds of explosives reverberated far into the distance.
A year later, Tivoli Gardens - minus Dudus, his henchmen and the 73 people who were buried a year earlier - now under police-military control, struggles to regain some semblance of normality.
Then came Labour Day 2011 and a bombshell of another kind was unleashed, which would leave the Government of Jamaica in a whirl.
Some unwanted glare was thrown at James Robertson, the minister of mining and the speculation mill was activated when the mighty United States revoked his visitor's visa.
It was an unprecedented move by the powerful neighbour up north. Never before had the US revoked the visa of a serving government minister. Robertson had no choice but to quit his Cabinet post.
The strike against Robertson came at a time when he was subjected to mounting pressure in relation to his handling of a highly-explosive Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project that had got inflammable.
Again Golding was called to act.
In 2008, as the blame spread as rapidly as the blaze which engulfed sections of the Armadale facility and cruelly snapped the lives of seven young girls, Golding asked the governor general to establish a commission of enquiry.
The prime minister who struggled to extricate himself from the knotty extradition imbroglio, which ushered in an American law firm called Manatt, Phelps & Phillips repeated his strategy - another commission of enquiry.
This May, the prime minister dispatched his foreign affairs minister, Dr Kenneth Baugh to talk to United States ambassador, Pamella Bridgewater.
But it is not wise to rule out another enquiry just yet, as the saga continues to be played out.