Ewart Walters | Open letter to Gerry Grindley

Dear Gerry,

Wha 'appen, man! Long, long time! I was about to ask 'how you do?,' but the two recent articles in The Gleaner seem to suggest everyting criss! Ah glad fi yuh. And ah glad yuh decide to give us ah likkle piece of confession. Dem seh confession is good for de soul, and at age 86, you might be thinking this is a good time to confess. Better late than never!

So yuh really decide yuh mine and tell us yuh were asked by the PSOJ to help get rid of Michael Manley? Good start! 'Cause is plenty tings people seh happen dem times deh, but we never get anyting from de horse's mout, so to speak. Now here yuh come, unbridled, making a likkle canter from the paddock, and seh yuh was involved in ousting Michael Manley.

As ah seh, good start! But yuh fi unbridle some more. Pop tory gih me! Like, when yuh start giving help? Yuh start fi di 1967 election? Or latah wid de 1980 election?

Mi memba seh yuh was running yuh own PR outfit, Grimax, an 'trang PNP man. An immaculately dressed. Always in a nice grey suit. An de Jaguar! Short of a Rolls, the best car fi a short man who want to impress. All dem early days when yuh would drive the Jaguar down to Harbour Street fi bring yuh press releases to The Gleaner. The grey suit! An de smile! Nice, nice.

CASE OF REJECTION

But mi nevah quite understand exactly why you leave out Michael an go work fi Eddie and the JLP. A kno dat in the case of Anne Sabo, it was a case of rejection. Anne Sabo? Yes, you should remember har. De short, facety American woman who did call Information Minister Ed Bartlett "dat likkle black boy". Yes, man. The white woman who come down to Jamaica and tell Jamaican journalists seh dem cyaan go inna King's House.

You muss remember har. Cause the two a yuh work fi get Michael outta powah. She did do some work on the bauxite file fi Michael, but when the PNP government selected one PR agency for all its work in America, and she nevah get did job, she turn. An when Eddie win an give har de million dollah contrak, she sen plenty article down to Hector Wynter fi him put inna de Gleaner under the headline 'As others see us'. Yes, man.

Ah haffi wandah eff ah de same ting appen to yuh. Grimax was a big, big name in PR. But when Michael launch him campaign fi de 1972 election, yuh nevah get de PR contrak. It did go to Desmond Henry and Ralston Smith at Public Relations Associates (PRA). So ah dat why yuh leff out Michael, Gerry?

Or was it de money? Plenty Uncle Sam money flow inna Jamaica during dem two election campaign, 1976 and 1980. Yuh did get somma it? Plenty smaddy start write column. Yuh membah dem smaddy deh? Wilmot Perkins, Dawn Ritch, David D'Costa, 'Gerald Ironside', 'Patricia Smallman', C. Roy Reynolds, Byron Balfour, Aimee DeLisser-Webster, Jim Hawkes, Carl Stone, and John Akar, de man from Sierra Leone who did tangle wid Dudley Thompson one night on JBC's 'Firing Line' programme. An yuh membah seh as soon as Eddie win the 1980 election, mos' a dem tap write? Mi tink seh dem tap write causn seh de money tap flow! Mi no kno eff a money why yuh change, but ebery man fi 'imself.

Howsomevah, ... yuh know seh ah plenty blood flow a Jamaica dem time deh. Plenty plenty blood. Mos' of it in de name of shooting Michael out of power. Jussundah 700 fi de '76 election. An jussundah a tousan fi 1980. An plenty in-between. An plenty not reported! A nuff, nuff blood dat.

Of course, yuh know dat right after de 1980 election de bloodletting cut. Dramatically. An yuh muss know seh in a time when visa was hard to get, plenty gunman get visa and go to de US an set up posse. Som a dem all go a Canada.

Mi know dats you was not in dat league. Yuh was not a gunman. But yuh leff Jamaica, too. An yuh go jine anedda conservative party upso.

Now, me no carry feelins fi a man becausn the party him choose. De system we have up to now is a two-party system, and man haffi choose. Bird cyaan fly pan wan wing. Wan han cyaan clap. So no problem, man, eff yuh leff Michael and go work wid de adder man dem. Level vibes.

But now yuh tek up wid Trump! Lawd God! An yuh no satisfy fi tek up wid Trump, yuh haffi cuss Obama seh 'im no do nuttn fi black people.

Dat a lie. Big lie. An yuh done kno dat a lie. Wha mek yuh haffi do dat? Money? Or bad mine?

All fun an joke aside, Obama's rescue of General Motors helped the company, yes. But it was a huge help to black people. You know what General Motors' address is? P.O. Box 33170 Detroit, MI 48232-5170. You know anything about the population of Detroit? Blacks are 83 per cent of Detroit's population. You know who an who work at General Motors then? You are a bright man. You can work it out.

You must remember Obama's Affordable Care Act. The act which your Republican Party members sarcastically called Obamacare and which they are still fighting against but now beginning to change their mind. Obamacare is a monumental boon to black people. Did you help the Republicans fight Obamacare? You would not do that, would you?

Obama came to power on the wings of a speech he made to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. In that speech, He declared the US was not a collection of red states and blue states, but it was the United States. And you must remember who Obama is. Black by the American 'one-drop rule', he never wore blackness on his sleeve. What is more, he is a product of 'the browning of America', the explosion of citizens who are at once both black and white and neither black nor white.

So whatever Obama did was for the entire country, even while it has been of great assistance to blacks. And that is what the Nobel Foundation foresaw when it awarded him the Nobel Prize - not for what he had done, but for the expectation of what he could do after the dark, dismal years of Dubya Bush.

Gerry, confession is a good thing. Many of us have longed for the day when the people who were involved in the murderous, bullet-riddled, bloodletting of the 1970s would come to the rescue of Jamaica in an act of truth and reconciliation. I still hope for it.

What you have done is to prise the lid of that box barely open. What you need to say is exactly what and how you helped propel Michael Manley from power. And who exactly were the people (in the PSOJ and elsewhere) that were paying you for your work. Jamaica has needed this frank and full outflow of confession.

You have been blessed with long life. Perhaps that is why this beginning of a confession? Even at 86, it is not too late to go before the throne of grace with a full confession and seek God's mercy.

Minutes before his death, Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus was offered that opportunity, but he didn't embrace it. And we know what happened to him! You still have time, my brother. But not much!

Blessings!

- Ewart Walters, former Gleaner parliamentary reporter, is a triple journalism gold medallist and author. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and spectrum@storm.ca.