Mark Wignall | You disappoint me Floyd Green

There was just something I saw in the young man that moved me to speak to him when I was first introduced to him about 15 years ago. Floyd Green. We spoke briefly. In that time, I told him that I saw him moving like a rocket, based on what had been coming to me in the last year or so. Politically.

Then this. A video was circulated which showed Green at a table enjoying the company of his friends. Enjoying chilled, sparkling wine and chatting it up and in the middle of rip-roaring laughter. Maybe the scallops and the lobster were in the kitchen coming up.

Certainly the (then) minister, even in the back of his mind, must have calculated the risk involved. He is a highly intelligent man and that must have informed a part of him.

It is long known in just about all democracies that laws laid out broadly across the land gives to the elite, that untouchable set of our people, the right to escape the clutches of the law.

Maybe in some other place, not very far from where Green and his elites were, the police were herding a few young men into trucks. Because they were caught in the same situation that Green was not caught in.

I am tempted to side with those who have been making out a big case for Green to be reinstated. Let us recap here. He has resigned, he has apologised. Basically, he has said without saying it that ‘I do not have the right and the privilege to openly enjoy the type of life that the laws of the country declare that you, the governed do not have’.

Accountability is painful when wrong is accepted. But, not because the minister had a likeable baby face and he is just about the most effective minister in the Holness Cabinet means that he must not face up to being caught.

I am disappointed in Green for many reasons. Did he really believe that his good-times party would not be revealed? It is quite likely that many parties like that had taken place before in other pockets of elitism, the minister was aware of those and nothing had happened. So, why not have his soirée?

But, he is not just any man. He was the brilliant young find in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) cabinet. There must have been a lot of him that Andrew Holness must have seen in himself. In that view, the prime minister must be seeing pain right at this very minute.

PNP A MERE BLIP ON THE RADAR

Recent political polls have been like a huge mountain tumbling down on top of the People’s National Party (PNP). If we take our memories a bit back, we will remember that it was under the leadership of Dr Peter Phillips that the political irrelevance of the PNP began, metastasised and ate out the vitals of the PNP in 2020.

The NNN/Blue Dot polls have confirmed what many of us have felt at street level. Many people are mad at the JLP and the prime minister but not many of those people see the Opposition PNP as a viable option.

If an election were called now, according to the findings of the Blue Dot poll 65 per cent of registered voters would vote JLP and 35 per cent would vote PNP. As crazy as this may sound, those numbers and wide swings in all constituencies could see in an election match-up the PNP winning only two seats, South St Andrew and South West St Andrew.

The real danger is that, as the Opposition PNP disappears into a black hole of political nothingness, it presents the ruling JLP with a slate of arrogance that it believes it can ride on. Wrong move!

I am forced to ask myself some questions about the PNP which used to be my party. It was the party that made me vote the first time. December 1976. Then in March 1993 and in the elections in 1997 and 2002. It is hard for me to see me voting for the PNP by how it is currently made up.

TO HELL WITH ANTI-VAXXERS

My helper is not vaccinated and, based on my questioning her, she does not intend to get vaccinated. “Annette, I am having a problem here. Everyone in this house is vaccinated. You are not.”

“Mark, mi nah tek it. Mi eat one peg a garlic every morning. You eat garlic?,” she said.

“Not like that, ugh,” I replied.

“An mi drink juice mek up a whole heap a herbs,” she said.

Now I think Annette is expert at what she does – domestic work. She is methodical and almost clinical at how she approaches her work. It would hurt me to not have her doing her work. But … .

Everyone in my family has had their vaccines. I am forced to ask myself why it is that I and my family have taken vaccines. It certainly cannot be we did it because we are idiots. So, could it be because we are near-idiots? Well, if it is not so, what could it mean?

She is one of my favourite bartenders, but she will never, she tells me, take a vaccine for COVID-19. “Mark, mi nuh like how dem mek it up so quick. Mi not tekking it.”

I used to argue with her. Now I just smile at her as she fulminates on the evils of vaccine. But I felt like breaking our personal law.

“So seriously, why yu tek it?” she asks.

“Because it is the sensible thing to do. Plus, from wi likkle wi tekking vaccine. A nuh nutten.”

I asked her a question where I had the answer. “Yu have children?”

“Two,” she said.

“I know. Plus I know you love them badly,” They are teens.

“If you love your children, you will do what you must do to protect their lives. Let me ask you this. If you had to take the vaccine to save their lives, would you do it?”

“Of course!” she answered.

“Well, you have found the answer,” I said.

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