Share the blame, Mr Seaga -
Editorials, Current Issues & Opinion Articles
- JamaicaObserver.com
Sunday, May 30, 2010
THE universities of Technology and the West Indies (UTech and UWI) must be cringing with shame in the aftermath of last week’s analysis of Jamaica’s crisis by Mr Edward Seaga, one of their brightest academic stars.
If they’re not, they ought to be.
According to Mr Seaga, who serves as a honorary distinguished fellow at the professorial level in UWI’s School for Graduate Studies and Research and Pro-Chancellor of UTech, Prime Minister Bruce Golding should resign.
“Frankly that is my view because he is showing day by day that he cannot cope,” said Mr Seaga in an interview on TVJ.
While there are many people who would not argue with that view, we’re willing to bet that even fewer can really tolerate Mr Seaga’s exposition of it.
For anyone who has the slightest inkling about Jamaica’s political history over the last five decades could not fail to miss the downright immorality of Mr Seaga’s position.
Coming as it did in the aftermath of the tragic but thoroughly necessary reaction by our security forces to the brazen assault that criminal gunmen in Tivoli Gardens perpetuated on the State in their misguided attempt to show solidarity for alleged drug lord Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, Mr Seaga’s argument is highly hypocritical.
Where has he been over the past nine months while Mr Golding fought the US’ extradition request for Mr Coke to answer charges of drug- and gun-running?
Why didn’t he, in his capacity as conceptualiser of the garrison capital of West Kingston that is Tivoli Gardens, seek to sway Mr Golding away from the eventual confrontation with Washington.
Was it not patently obvious to him then, that the only outcome could be epic tragedy?
Many others who are nowhere near as experienced and lettered as he, saw it coming.
Had Mr Seaga thrown the intellectual and political clout, of which our universities are so proud, behind the effort to convince Mr Golding to settle the issue — before Mr Coke and his lieutenants had time to gear up — is it not at least arguable that some of the Tivoli casualties might have been averted?
And why, when the barricades were being mounted at the entrances to Tivoli, did he not use his influence to convince the residents to heed the authorities’ appeal to dismantle the blockades?
Did 73 lives have to be wasted in order to elicit the scholarly analysis which Mr Seaga offers so freely now?
Mr Seaga tells us, without shame, that Ms Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange, the current minister of youth, sport and culture, was his pick for a successor, as she was better able to cope than Mr Golding.
Better able to cope with what and whom?
Whoever succeeded Mr Seaga would have eventually come to the same crossroads as Mr Golding.
Indeed, had Mr Seaga overstayed his welcome as West Kingston’s member of parliament any longer, he would have come to it himself.
What would he, Ms Grange or any of the current crop of politicians who helped birth the culture of garrison constituencies to secure political supremacy, have done?
The cold, hard fact is that Mr Golding has inherited from Mr Seaga a constituency whose reputation for violence overshadows its positive achievements. Adding to that dilemma is a culture ingrained in Tivoli that it is a state within a state.
Mr Golding’s task now — if he intends to reclaim some amount of respect and authority — is to change that culture.
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