Prime Minister Bruce Golding is obviously determined not to be remembered for the sordid Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke affair which mortally wounded his ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
His announcement yesterday that he would not seek re-election as party leader at the JLP’s November annual conference, and thereafter to cede the job of prime minister once a new party leader has been elected, is the decision of a man willing to put party and country above his own personal interest.
This is indeed unprecedented in the annals of Jamaica’s political history.
No prime minister of Jamaica — perhaps with the arguable exception of the Most Hon P J Patterson — has stepped down under similar circumstances.
Sir Alexander Bustamante stepped down because of ill-health; Sir Donald Sangster died in the job in 1967; the Most Hon Hugh Lawson Shearer lost the 1972 election and was two years later pushed aside as party leader; the Most Hon Michael Manley lost the 1980 election, won re-election in 1989 and was forced out by ill-health in 1992; the Most Hon Edward Seaga lost the 1989 election and three others before being forced out as party leader; Mr Patterson gave way to allow a new leader to prepare for the 2007 elections; and the Most Hon Portia Simpson Miller lost that election.
If Mr Golding’s decision was not a political ploy to frighten the party and rally the forces around him, it would represent a new day in Jamaican politics. For we are not, in our political culture, imbued with a sense of gentlemanly dignity. Our leaders fight to hold on to their positions to the bitter end.
We, of course, are going by the party’s statement out of its Central Executive meeting yesterday that Mr Golding had planned to lead the party into a second term of government and demit office within two years thereafter, but that the challenges of the last four years had taken their toll on him.
“…It was appropriate now to make way for new leadership to continue the programmes of economic recovery and transformation while mobilising the party for victory in the next general elections,” the statement said.
Taking the prime minister at his word, we are truly encouraged by something which would amount to a substantial act of patriotism.
Inevitably, it will be argued that Mr Golding has been so tainted by the Coke and related Manatt affair that he cannot lead the party to victory in elections constitutionally due next year. We recall that the party had wrestled with that issue and rejected an earlier offer of resignation by their leader.
But it is our view that even if that were the problem, Mr Golding would have smashed political tradition in not holding on to the end, given that the party had not, up to recently, indicated it had wanted him to go.
Mr Golding would then have heralded a new political order and thereby cemented his legacy, albeit as a one-term prime minister.
