Mark Wignall | Flowing with the culture

In the week before it happened, during its exciting intrigue and days after its on-stage implosion, discussion among Jamaicans under 40 centred mostly on local entertainer Vybz Kartel. For those who came in late, the entertainer was arrested in 2011, along with three other men, for murder. Kartel got 35 years. The body of the man allegedly killed by Kartel has never been found.

In 2024, the judgment was eventually overturned by the Privy Council. Kartel once again became a free man. When his big show was kept last week, it seemed that just about everything else that existed in Jamaica like jerk pork, white rum, a rum special, Sunday chicken and oxtail as a broad-box meal faded in importance.

Contradictions presented themselves. Many middle-class Jamaicans could not decide whether they should join the crowd, endorse Kartel and march with the crowd to spend big cash to go up-full with Mr Palmer. It became especially problematic as Jamaicans are well known for believing that if foreigners endorse it, it must be right.

It happened in the late 1970s as white people in Europe and progressives in the USA stepped up for Marley and we at home figured that it was our time to hop on the train. I must confess that I have not tried very hard to like Kartel’s music. Too much of it seems to endorse ‘chrome pon waist’ violence. Kartel has plainly stated that it is not his job to be a nanny to other people’s children. That I fully agree with.

If, for example, an uptown poet with a PhD should arise among us and his focus is on people having sex in the public square and screaming about it, how would we rate that person alongside Kartel? Remember now, Kartel’s entertainment output has long rocketed past its quality. If he can fill hotels in the beach resort areas and in urban city centres like Kingston and downtown MoBay, why bother to debate the whys and wherefores of his art?

This year in Jamaica our people will be taken up with trying to decide if we should take our cues from politicians who will be coming to us for votes later on in the year. At the same time, many of us, especially our women folk, are taken up with the constantly rising costs of food and grocery items. The JLP will be wishing and hoping that the people suffer a special type of political amnesia over that. Meanwhile, the PNP will want to push the very fact of that while trying to make out a story that it has a package fix to solve rising prices.

JAMAICA AND PIECE OF TRUMP

A reader emailed me: “I do not sense that Jamaica is prepared to deal with the US in the four years ahead, and they will be very different than the previous eight years. First off, Senator Marco Rubio will be a far different Secretary of State than Mike Pompeo or Tony Blinken.

“Rubio is very knowledgeable and engaged with Caribbean political matters as is his staff. Rubio also has over 300,000 Jamaicans living in the Florida diaspora, with thousands more Jamaicans coming to Florida each year on work visas. He is also very attuned to Holness cosying up to the Chinese. Neither incoming President Trump nor Secretary of State Rubio will tolerate any Jamaica shenanigans; they will slap on a Level 4 travel advisory in a heartbeat to send a message.”

SOFT JAMAICAN JOURNALISTS

A reader who is once again tackling the Integrity Commission writes: “If the IC was doing a real investigation, this referral on the PM would have been done in secret. Having the report in Parliament tabled with detailed personal data of the prime minister (possibly in breach of the Data Protection Act) and then saying you want further probe is suspicious. The issue of prejudice alone would prevent any real investigation from happening. Why didn’t this referral happen in secret? Which investigator in the world does what the IC did?

“Jamaican journalists need to be bold and simply look at how anti-corruption bodies around the world operate. The Jamaican Integrity Commission is far below par.

“Furthermore, the PM has said that he has successfully done statutory declarations from 1997-2020. This cannot be overlooked.”

The reader, who is an attorney-at law-states: “I fully support his decision to apply for judicial review. The public will not only get a public hearing but we will also get finality on the matter, which is far more effective than just talking in the public square. The latter would be a distraction to governance.

“The fact that he is the first politician to successfully apply for judicial review against the IC cannot be overlooked.

“Finally, there is a tendency to view some people like pastors or members of the IC as being above criticism. This is backward thinking and Jamaica is worse off for it.

“In my view, anyone who benefits from taxpayers’ money is up for scrutiny. There ought to be no sacred cows in Jamaica. That is my view.”

SPONTANEOUS ERUPTION OF VIOLENT TALK

Election year 2025 will pit genuine candidates against the usual run-of-the-mill types. I must confess that both the JLP and the PNP are not exactly suffering from a shortage of quality candidates. Quality or not, these younger candidates will have to deal with a set of young people as constituents who are anything but ‘normal.’

Some communities simply burst out into violent talk each morning, and in each minute, the distance between talk and actual violence draws closer.

“Older people in these communities prove to be very important in closing down what is impending violence.,” said a senior retired JCF member to me recently.

I told him that I would be making an examination of the slate of bright young candidates in both political parties in the next week or so. “I want you to ask these candidates what makes them better than the older candidates they are replacing and what new solutions they are bringing to the table.

“You have to press them on that, Mr Wignall. No joke.”

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