Chang says Warmington’s comments ‘unfortunate’

General secretary of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Dr Horace Chang, has described as “unfortunate” racially tinged comments made by his colleague minister Everald Warmington about Opposition Leader Mark Golding.

Asked if the JLP and the government rejected Warmington’s remarks, Chang and Robert Morgan, de facto information minister, sought to paint the political organisation as one that was inclusive and embraced people of all races.

“The comment is a political one because I think Mr Warmington was responding to some comments that have been made before. It is an unfortunate comment, but there is no ethnic division in Jamaica in the political arena,” Chang said on Thursday at a press conference called by the JLP to announce plans for its 79th annual conference.

The JLP general secretary said that the party had noted the comments of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, which blasted Warmington for his “divisive” remarks.

Speaking at a political rally at Cheesefield in St Catherine North Eastern at the weekend, Warmington suggested that Golding’s racial background made him unfit to become prime minister of Jamaica.

“Weh Mark Golding mother and father come from? If he wants to be prime minister, go back a England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, but him nah beat Andrew Michael Holness,” Warmington told party supporters.

Chang said that no reference is made to minorities in Jamaica, noting that every person born here is called Jamaican.

In his comments, Morgan indicated that since its inception, the JLP has engaged and collaborated with people of all ethnicities.

“We started to a great extent in 1938 with the dock workers and the workers at Frome with Alexander Bustamante, and throughout our entire history, we have always been inclusive,” he said.

“It is not the JLP that has brought racial division in the body politic of the Jamaican people. That is a fact. And the party – and the leadership of the party – is very clear that the Jamaica Labour Party is an inclusive party,” he insisted.

Morgan said that the party had people of Middle Eastern, Asian and European descent who have “all come together within the Jamaica Labour Party under one umbrella to build out a strong party”.

On Thursday, the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), which is led by Golding, expressed disgust at the “repulsive and racially charged” Warmington’s remarks.

PNP Chairman Dr Angela Brown-Burke said the comments were “despicable and in poor taste”.

“The comments are offensive to Mr Golding and all Jamaicans, but also insult our (Jamaica’s) motto: ‘Out of Many, One People’,” Brown-Burke said.

The PNP chairman defended Golding’s nationality, saying he was born at The University Hospital of the West Indies.

“His nationality and heritage are of unquestionable authenticity,” said Brown-Burke, adding that the fact that “JLP apologists would seek to use MP Golding’s skin colour to incite hate against him is a most repulsive political stunt, which must be rebuffed by society at large”.

Political Ombudsman Donna Parchment Brown said she has dispatched a letter to Warmington, informing him that she was investigating the matter.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com