Mark Wignall | Balancing hope and harsh reality in 2020
Published:Thursday | January 2, 2020 | 12:00 AM
When I met 45-year-old Chuck in 1976, he was a living, breathing centre of optimism and, if you had 10 minutes, a pep talk guru. He was the general manager of a medium-sized business in the hospitality industry.
He was always making himself available to young people like me. His basic philosophy was, by his own words, “We occupy this mass of protoplasm we call the body. Without the operation of brainpower, that’s all it is. An unthinking mass of flesh.”
But Chuck had a major fault shared by many men of his generation. To him, he was an unrepentant lover of women, but those gentle creatures had to know their limits, and not step outside of the game of play.
One day, Chuck had a dust-up with his newly married wife. He became violently physical with her, requiring her to call the police. Chuck was still in an exasperated state when the cops came and had no intention of backing down. He went for his licensed firearm, and after a tussle, Chuck was shot dead. A month later, his widow committed suicide.
Harsh reality is the twinning of our best and most terrible sides. And much of what happens in the middle. With all the good advice Chuck gave, he still couldn’t manage the balance.
Many of those who needed a shot-in-the-arm to remind us of our international importance in all areas of life, and (who) were never quite used to the absence of sporting giants like Usain Bolt, were very definitely in the mood to embrace the little lady from St Thomas Toni-Ann Singh, as she won the 2019 Miss World contest. The word was love.
The bursting of clappers, launching of fireworks and gunshots from gangsters in inner-city alleys and small centres, are quiet for now as we welcomed 2020 on New Year’s Eve. We know that 2020 will be trying to overdose us on politics, but we have been there before, and those politicians who are more protoplasm than brains will be called out.
Political jinx
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration only had a single term after its election in 2007. The People’s National Party (PNP) administration only enjoyed one chance at the bat after its election in 2011. The JLP administration, which won in 2016, feels it has more than a good chance of breaking that political jinx by whopping the tar off the presently hapless PNP Opposition and grabbing a second straight term in 2020.
Harsh reality tells us that gangsters, territorial feuding and bloodletting will be a part of 2020, as it was in 2019. The ruling JLP administration realistically has no workable plan in its national security arsenal to reduce murders by 50 per cent, a springboard reduction to bring it to normal limits.
Because of that, the JLP will find itself strapped for time, and it always knew that a 2021 election would prove to be an expensive gamble as the randomised murders worked on our national psyche, like stockbrokers viewing a market crash.
In 2020, we will need to engage less of our protoplasm, and more brainpower. One immediate part of that is for more of our people to utilise the democratic process to call out those politicians whose withered brain cells have rendered them useless. Even if our people do not actually vote them out, a message must be sent at the next election.
The longer the election trends towards 2021, the more time it will give the opposition PNP to play catch-up on lukewarm JLP supporters and voter attrition.
Can a significant JLP win give it a psychological boost in crime-fighting in 2020. Why not?