The coming days will determine whether, as his handlers insist it is, Mr Bruce Golding’s decision to step down as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the country’s prime minister is irreversible. Or if, as the cynics are likely to believe, it is a ruse to have the JLP’s rank and file rally around the leader to shore up his fortunes.
Those who hold to the latter view will claim it to be a strategy used a quarter-century ago to great effect by Mr Golding’s one-time mentor and now-estranged predecessor as JLP leader, Mr Edward Seaga.
In 1986, his party having been trounced in local government elections and the administration in a rough period with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr Seaga’s leadership faced internal pressure. That October, Mr Seaga offered to step down immediately as party leader and as prime minister the following August.
His supporters launched a keep-the-leader campaign among the base, securing Mr Seaga’s grip on the JLP. It is a strategy he would use, in various iterations, over the next 18 years to maintain an increasingly troubled and tenuous hold on the JLP.
There are discernible similarities between the actions and outcomes of Mr Seaga and Mr Golding, although it is too early to determine whether they are coincidences or the predictable result of the tactics employed. For, example, the JLP’s Central Executive, the party’s highest decision-making body outside the annual conference, voted to decline Mr Golding’s resignation. Second, at the height of his pressures over the Christopher Coke extradition scandal, Mr Golding offered his party his resignation, which was rejected.
No time for uncertainty
Whatever may be Mr Golding’s calculation, he must move with the decisiveness that too often escapes him. He should be aware, too, that if this is a bluff, it could well be called. For there are many people in the party who agree that Mr Golding is, as opinion surveys suggest, a liability to the JLP. The leader’s unprovoked action may have given them an opportunity to act.
Speed and clarity on the prime minister’s part are essential in a troubled, and potentially worsening, economic environment. There are still issues to be resolved in Jamaica’s stalled standby agreement with the IMF. Further, there are signs that the global economy could be heading into another recession, which could derail Jamaica’s nascent recovery, with the adjustment project still incomplete.
The situation, therefore, demands close and detailed attention to global and domestic policies, at a time when a leadership contest in the JLP would cause distractions. What is particularly worrisome for this newspaper about the prime minister’s timing is that if he is serious that someone else should lead the party and the Government, he could have acted much earlier.
Indeed, we have several times urged Mr Golding to make up his mind; if he was to stay on as prime minister, he needed to buckle down and get on with the job. Indeed, after the disaster of the Coke affair, leading a Government that took the tough decision to put Jamaica on a path to sustained growth and a new morality in governance would have been Mr Golding’s opportunity for redemption and a place in history. Perchance this is Mr Golding’s political requiem, it is a sad end to a premiership that, at the start, promised so much.
There are many people in the party who agree that Mr Golding is … a liability to the JLP.
