Editorial | Baugh gentleman of Jamaican politics

It is hardly a contrivance of death that the recurring adjectives in the tributes to Ken Baugh relate to decency and service. He was that kind of man. A skilled surgeon, Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) politician and government minister, Dr Baugh died on Sunday, aged 78.

It is perhaps Bruce Golding, in whose 2007-2011 Government he served as foreign minister and deputy prime minister, who summed up Dr Baugh best. “Ken was a person of unquestionable integrity, which he steadfastly maintained even in the tumult of political life,” Mr Golding remarked. “He was passionate about giving public service, whether as a gifted surgeon at the Cornwall Regional Hospital or a member of parliament (MP) as minister of government.”

Dr Baugh came to Parliament in the JLP wave of 1980 under Edward Seaga as the MP for North Western St James. He was health minister in Mr Seaga’s administration until 1989 and was largely considered to have been effective in the job, pushing through several significant reforms in the health sector, some of which, including the closure/downgrading of hospitals, were controversial.

He was able, in part, to navigate these controversies for the same reason that made him a critical, though underappreciated and insufficiently recognised, member of the Seaga Government. People recognised his expertise as a doctor and appreciation of health management. Significantly, too, he, in personality, was the polar opposite of his boss.

Mild-mannered, soft-spoken

He was mild-mannered, soft-spoken, always ready for reasoned discourse. Seaga’s public persona was tough, combative and unyielding. In that transitional period, with its remnants of Jamaica’s Cold War conflicts, Dr Baugh and Hugh Shearer helped soften the edges of Mr Seaga’s, and the administration’s, perceived hardness and offered a point of contact to some who might have thought it too difficult to engage the Government.

In that context, it is not surprising that Dr Baugh, in the 1990s, when Peter Phillips, now the opposition leader, was the health minister, readily offered “help and advice”. Yet, Dr Baugh, whether to Mr Seaga and later to Mr Golding, remained loyal, a fact highlighted in the interregnum, in 2005, between Mr Seaga stepping down as head of the JLP and Mr Golding winning a parliamentary seat to qualify as opposition leader.

Hiatus from active politics

After a four-year stint in the Senate following the JLP’s 1989 electoral defeat, Dr Baugh took a hiatus from active politics. He retuned in the latter part of the 1990s with the party in a factional fight over Seaga’s leadership and was an important stabilising force as general secretary and MP in the years leading up to Mr Golding’s takeover. It is significant that in the months between Mr Seaga’s departure and Golding’s re-entry to the House, it was Dr Baugh who JLP parliamentarians felt safe to coalesce around as leader of the Opposition.

And he made it clear that he had no ambition beyond that interim role. “The JLP is very united on the way forward,” he told this newspaper at the time. “Bruce Golding is the person we will rally around.”

Later, in 2010, when he was foreign minister in the Golding administration, with Jamaica under pressure from the United States over its resistance to the extradition of drug dealer and JLP supporter Christopher Coke, Dr Baugh was able to represent to the Americans his Government’s argument of concern for the violation of Coke’s constitutional rights without being sullied by the fallout from the administration’s position. There was the sense he was being loyal.

Hardly does anyone go through a long career in politics without blemish, and the Coke episode may have been Dr Baugh’s. But, in balance, Dr Baugh stands with the best, and as Prime Minister Andrew Holness said, he was “a true gentleman of Jamaican politics”.