Raising Cain, but is he able?

Orville Taylor, Gleaner Writer

He is still my friend and respected graphic artist, who knows Jamaican political history, but despite his well-reputed expertise on the subject, Troy Caine should not think that he has a monopoly. After all, it is never my contention that puns and verbal gymnastics are my exclusive domain, however clumsily others might try to imitate them. Furthermore, I don't do personal attacks and standing almost a foot below me, I don't want to appear to stoop to one against him.

However, in his parting comments last week, he invited me to respond. So here goes. Criticising my analysis of the recent 'landslide' and apparent 'backslide' of Everald Warmington in the just-concluded St Catherine South Western by-election, Caine complained about a diet of inaccuracies and a misunderstanding of our political history. It is strange that he even bothered to comment on a fact that I already acknowledged, that, in by-elections, voter turnout is traditionally low. Thus, to make an issue of something which was already a basis of my analysis is disingenuous.

Let what is true stand. Warmington's victory in the 2007 general election is not the widest margin among successful Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidates. Despite Warmington himself boasting about this, it is not so. Therefore, if he could be so delusional about his own margin of victory, how far from reality can he actually go? Indeed, Caine is correct in that "Warmington neither polled the most votes, nor had the highest margin ... ." He continues, "His margin was the fourth largest among the successful JLP candidates (behind Golding, Grange and Henry) and his poll was second only to Shahine Robinson's 11,632 in North East St Ann." I leave Caine to make sense of this poorly constructed paragraph.

Trying to throw a green light on the by-election results, Caine rattles, "Warmington's personal poll, which was more than 50 per cent of his 2007 poll, posted a victory margin of 65 per cent compared to 58.7 per cent in '07. This comparison can be made, considering that Carlos Waul's grand poll of 2,959 (32 per cent) in the final count was really a PNP poll in disguise."

The fact is, the People's National Party (PNP) in disguise is absolutely not the same as an overtly nominated candidate, who campaigns in waves of orange and political meetings. Notably, in St Ann North East, Rastafarian journalist Devon Evans was supposedly being supported by the PNP, and someone declared publicly that Comrades should vote for him. It is plainly dishonest and, at best, naïve to suggest that because elements of a party endorse a candidate, who is not representing them, it automatically translates into them posting a candidate.

From my information, Waul, who was run over by Warmington in the polls, was as much a representative of the PNP as Warmington was American. So it is insincere for my esteemed colleague to inaccurately state "the PNP could only manage about 2,900 votes out of an electorate of more than 37,000 voters". The PNP did not contest the election.

As for the PNP, Caine should have advised that my column was about Warmington's sociopathy and boorishness, and the likely consequences for him and his party in the coming elections. The RJR-Boxill polls have already indicated slipping fortunes for the JLP, and any reference to the PNP is in that context. Interestingly, his notation of the idiocy of a 2007 comment by the PNP's A.J. Nicholson in St Elizabeth supports my argument. Nicholson did say, like Warmington, that hurricane-relief recipients "haffi vote fi Kern!" Well, Kern Spencer is in so much trouble now he has a wardrobe of 'pickney shut', and it is the arrogance and continued taking voters for fools that led to their electoral demise and the ascendancy of the JLP in 2007.

The sheer ludicrousness of Caine equating the PNP's "political cowardice ... in not contesting these by-elections" with Warmington's shameful behaviour is as comparable as the inappropriate sacrifice his namesake made in Genesis. Stupidly, the biblical Cain offered up ground provisions instead of an animal. Hopefully in the zeal to defend Warmington, his intellect or well-established clarity of opinion is not sacrificed.

For him, Warmington's political back is broad. I have no expertise on dorsal proportions, though there are doubtless those who are. What matters is that he is smearing the image of his party and helping the cause of the PNP.

Of the PNP, while it is true that, as Caine states, "they are still unable to shake the perception of disunity, disorganisation, lacking in ideas and leadership material ... offering little or nothing as a viable alternative," they are ahead in the polls. As in 2007, voters simply choose what they perceive (whether true or mythical) to be the lesser of the two evils. By the way, the RJR-Boxill polls do show a growing disillusionment with the PNP as well. What I want to be understood is that there are few places where any one party or candidate is invincible, and St Catherine South Western is not one of those.

A point clearly was missed by Caine when he strangely latched on to the word entrenched in the expression "showed how much a constituency can swing, even when the candidate is entrenched". Had Caine paid attention to the entire paragraph and the previous one, it would have been blindingly apparent that my position was that the electorate in that constituency has swung in the past 30 years. It is great that the knowledge about 1944 and referendum of 1961 and the tenure of Tacius Golding is preserved in Caine's archives. But that is exactly what it is - history.

None of that made a difference in the period starting in 1980, when the constituency shifted from JLP to PNP to JLP again. Those of us who are sociologists study people, not simply historical data. And the more than half of the Jamaican electorate born after 1980 only knows of Tacius Golding because Jermaine Gonzales, the 400-metre record holder, went to the school named in his honour. He is as obscure a character to the present generation as are: Herbert Morrison, Aabuthnot Gallimore, Claude McKay, William Knibb and Bishop George deCarteret. By the way, the 'entrenched' referred to what Warmington might think that he is.

To try to make a martyr out of Warmington for being shot in 1980 is almost as bad as what some Islamists are doing with Osama bin Laden, who I really ought to have been writing about instead of an obscure, coarse politician hidden in the Caribbean. His being shot makes him join Brascoe Lee and Mike Henry and Roy McGann, who was killed in 1980. Furthermore, Pearnel Charles was detained for over a year and 'Babsy' Grange had to run in exile. More irrelevant history, Caine. While he was, like so many others, a victim of violence in our society, he is currently an embarrassment to his party.

Did anyone notice the latest chapter where he is seeking the removal of a member of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica? He read from the 'shedule' (sic) of the act, American pronunciation.

Dr Orville Taylor is a sociologist and talk show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.