Thu | Mar 28, 2024

Updated | Loyalty to JLP was not fully reciprocated – Derrick Smith

Retired politician retraces four decades on the hustings

Published:Sunday | December 26, 2021 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer
78-year-old Derrick Smith is determined to spend his remaining days with the great loves of his life, wife Karleen, his three sons and his grandsons.
Derrick Smith was disappointed that his son, Duane, did not succeed him as the party’s standard-bearer in St Andrew North Western.
Derrick Smith gave 40 dedicated years to the Jamaica Labour Party.
Derrick Smith is proud to have served his country.
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Derrick Smith is not one to bear a grudge, but hurt is what he still feels from four consequential events he faced within the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to which he dedicated 40 years of his life.

Always the gentleman, affable and non-confrontational, Smith gave The Sunday Gleaner insights into events of his recently published book, Turning Points, and discussion on the matters arising from the memoir.

The 78-year-old, who shed a tear or two during the interview last Wednesday, is determined to spend his remaining days with the great loves of his life, wife Karleen, his three sons and his grandsons.

Smith has come to believe that he was more loyal to the JLP than it was to him; that crime should never be political; and that communism would never survive in Jamaica.

He also spoke of how he picked a young, green Andrew Holness as a future leader of the ruling party.

Smith shadowed the national security portfolio for 20 years, 18 and a half years of which were in Opposition, and when the tide turned ever so slightly in September 2007 in the JLP's favour  – two seats after preliminary results showed 31-29, but was later increased to 33-27 after recounts – that small majority gave him ministerial life support. He now believes he would not have been given the national security portfolio by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding had the party secured a wider margin of victory.

“I can't say for sure that the loyalty I gave – for sure, definitely to Edward Seaga in the early part of my involvement in the JLP – to the party for 40 years, I can't be sure that I can say that I received that loyalty from the party,” Smith told The Sunday Gleaner during an interview at his Norbrook, St Andrew, home.

“Having lived politics for such a long time, some people say [that] in politics, there are no friends, but colleagues, associates, and while you are in the hustle and bustle, we work together. But in terms of loyalty to each other, to the party and to an individual, I don't know if I had reached the level where the party was totally loyal to me,” Smith said carefully after thinking for some time.

Issues towards the end of the political career of Miss Olive's son made him rethink.

“Those events suggested that it is always party first,” Smith concluded.

PARTY FIRST MOMENTS

These include his removal from the national security ministry, which he was first made aware of after reading it in the press, a matter which made him feel small, even to this day.

He was also disappointed that his son, Duane, did not succeed him as the party's standard-bearer in St Andrew North Western and a reported fib by a top party official “that the constituency was not registered” – the receipt for its registration which he still has – in order to clear the way for Dr Nigel Clarke's entry.

He also mulled over his own reticence – twice – when he refused to call a vote among the JLP parliamentary caucus to select a new party leader after Golding's exit in 2011 and to put the choice of his successor to delegates.

On the latter, Smith felt he would have won, but for the party's sake, he acquiesced to Holness' wishes, and for the former, he was not sure that Holness could beat Audley Shaw as the person commanding majority support among members of parliament on the government side.

He said that he stuck his neck out for Holness because he was “someone for whom I have always had a soft spot”.

“I don't know if he remembers, but I picked him out very early as a future leader of the JLP and even gave him advice, even during Seaga's days. I am not sure he took the advice and with Golding out, I chose him. Again, my association with Jaycees of Jamaica for many years gave me that insight. I could spot future leaders and I saw that in a young Andrew Holness,” he said.

Smith does not view his dismissal by Golding in the same manner as when Holness removed him for Clarke as one, he said, had the decency to discuss the matter and while it didn't end the way he had hoped, face-to-face, man-to-man discussions were held.

Years later, he said there was never that call with Golding, with whom he now has a “cordial” relationship.

The now-deceased politician Roger Clarke had previously explained that “political cordial relationships means 'hi and bye' when you see each other”.

Smith did not respond when told of that explanation.

ACTED IN PARTY'S INTEREST

“Golding acted in his and the party's interests at the time. He wanted me out. I didn't have a choice. And he did what he had to do. My concern is not what he did; that's his prerogative. It's how he did it, how he exposed me to embarrassment, and humiliation with my family and I know it could have been done another way ... . I have never been hit so hard in terms of being embarrassed in front of my family,” Smith explained about the headlines of his dismissal.

With Holness, he could not be fired as the elected representative, but being ill with diabetes, and neither physically nor mentally capable to continue, he did not stand in the way of the party's need for the particular expertise, which Holness said resided with Clarke.

The scourge of crime has been the Achilles heel of successive administrations for decades with the approach being to put out fires fuelled by a hobbling education system, a nation's love affair with drugs and guns, the lack of good role models and mentorship programmes, poor parenting, and less-than-ideal social environment and housing situations.

“If we are always outing fires, here, there, and everywhere, it means we do not have the opportunity to deal with the root causes and there are many. No Government – neither this one nor the previous one – has been able to deal with any one of the causes. And because we are not in a position to deal with any one thing the way we should, the result – crime – is going to be with us for a very long time. Worse, it has become political. Opposition parties tend to use the crime problem to beat any government, and that is also a problem,” he noted.

MURDER OUTPACE EFFORTS

Although the Government has recently been relying on zones of special operations, states of emergency and curfews to tackle crime, murders still outpace efforts, he said.

But the former national security minister noted that events impacting his early tenure included the resignation of then Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas, followed by the appointment of Rear Admiral Lewin from the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), the murder of an assistant police commissioner, and disquiet in the ranks of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that they did not want an 'outsider' heading the organisation.

His own diabetes discovery and subsequent surgery and increasing crime stacked the deck against him.

“During the run-up to the [2007] election, it became obvious to me that the populace – and I wont specify colour – but the business community and other members of the populace wanted [Trevor] MacMillan to play a role. He was very connected and well respected, but the results of the election was very close, and ... I am of the view that if Golding had a wider margin, I probably would not be in the Cabinet. But because he had just come back from the National Democratic Movement (NDM), I don't think he wanted to take the chance,” Smith recounted.

Both enjoyed good working relationships in the Cabinet.

He couldn't help feeling vindicated when Colonel MacMillan, who was appointed national security minister in 2008, was also fired by Golding.

“There was some vindication. He came to the portfolio with much fanfare, but it made no difference. So vindication is the right word, yes. But, I was later invited back to the Cabinet,” he reminded.

Smith said he has come to believe that there is corruption in the JCF after an incident in his teenage years when his bicycle was stolen, and being told to point out No. 2 at the identification parade. He has wondered to this day, as he noted in Turning Points, whether No. 2 was really the guilty person, but he just wanted back his bicycle.

Smith would witness Golding's eventual toppling, kick-started by a question in Gordon House from Dr Peter Phillips, who asked the prime minister about the engagement of a United States firm – Manatt, Phelps & Phillips – to lobby the United States administration to withdraw the extradition request for Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

The events remain seared in Smith's memory.

He said that Golding should not have answered, but should have allowed then foreign minister, Dr Kenneth Baugh, to respond if he had been briefed.

Smith watched as Golding floundered and flattered and the Government's handling of the massive security operation eventually launched to arrest Coke resulted in mass casualty, which also not only mortally wounded Golding's political career, but killed the JLP's chances at the 2011 polls.

It gave Smith no joy, he, however, told The Sunday Gleaner.

In hindsight, he also believes the democratic socialism ideology peddled by former Prime Minister Michael Manley could not have survived in Jamaica.

“I now believe it couldn't have survive in any form here,” Smith said.

Disorder, fallen standards in politics and the economy, lack of education and general lawlessness were the evidence, but the fear of the 1976-1980 period scared Jamaicans from all walks of life.

Finally, Smith urged politicians to stay close to their families, noting that everyone will either leave politics or it will leave them.

His many years on the hustings took time away from his boys, he admitted, noting that politics is usually hard on the families of politicians and many have opted to send their children overseas for school.

His own son, Duane, was asked to leave Wolmer's Boys' School twice; while an older son failed to disclose the birth of his own son, fearing that it would become big news and shame his parents.

His wife Karleen, for whom he has an unshakeable, unbreakable love, is the only female in his immediate family circle.

“Not yet,” he said about a granddaughter.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct results of the 2007 general election, which the Jamaica Labour Party won 33-27 after recounts. A previous reference to the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry contributing to former Prime Minister Bruce Golding's political downfall was also removed. The enquiry was held after he had demitted office.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com