Mark Wignall | Damion Crawford and his huge ego

Damion Crawford, People’s National Party (PNP) vice-president, senator, and spokesman on culture and entertainment had a supersensitive, private telephone conversation with two PNP-connected ladies sometime in September. Recently, it was leaked, which could have meant that the person who leaked it had considerable time to work out the full consequences of her actions.

According to polls, not so recent, Crawford has been the most popular person in the PNP. It would not surprise me if he still retains that top-shelf rating even after the delegate-decided ascendancy of Mark Golding to the Presidency.

I say this because I believe the delegate corps of both political parties has been growing in their understanding of liking a politician for the hype he has while seeing another as suited for the more serious matter of handling the leadership role.

The audio of the conversation tells us that the young 40-year-old politician that Crawford is, considers that his hype is bigger than his bite. He says that he gets just about the biggest applause at PNP meetings, which I believe to be true.

Bear in mind now that the telephone conversation was had before the PNP leadership contest. In it, he draws a simplistic deduction that since it was Andrew Holness’ youthful energy that led to the PNP’s wipeout in the September 3 general elections, those in the PNP would be going for Lisa Hanna over Mark Golding.

At the same time, however, the young man is unafraid to indicate to the ladies that somewhere in his political résumé, the word saviour is in the early stages of being etched as far as what he will be to the party.

He concludes (quite wrongly it turns out) that although Golding will not win over Hanna, he is at the top of the pecking order in the PNP.

“She has never gotten the adoration weh me get amongst regular people. Never! Lisa Hanna nuh get the cheer weh Dayton [Campbell] get when him reach a wah PNP meeting.

“… Lisa have a hundred camera a walk with har every day. Me walk without camera. Anything weh me a get, a weh people tek. She a train every day and she barely a edge me out. Den when me start wid three, wah go happen?”

Here is the thing. I totally agree with Crawford that many of us have had private conversations, and we have said negative things about people who we know. We would be quite embarrassed should those conversations be bared to those people.

Taken at face value it seems that Crawford is not as smart as he makes himself out to be. That is, if it was not Crawford himself who arranged the leak, working on the assumption that within a narrow band of possibilities, in politics, any news is good news.

If he did not do it, he would have had to consider the likelihood of the negative fallout it would have on a PNP still deep in its struggles to find one united entity and a strong, common voice. But there is still another way to examine the matter.

BEST TIME FOR PNP TO MESS UP IS NOW

Some may believe that the newest bit of noise in the PNP created by Crawford has made things even worse for the party. In the short term, I believe it will, but let’s look at it more closely.

It has just elected a new leaders – Mark Golding, and from early indications, he seems to be a no-nonsense leader who has the chops to get things going inside the PNP. He has named a shadow Cabinet, and I do not have a problem with the slate of people named.

But many people in the country are still seeing the Opposition PNP as a disturbed anthill with the ants running all over and headed in different directions. Another disturbance in the form of the leaked Crawford audio will not make much of a difference.

What the PNP needs to do is learn from those very ants. While many are running all over, there must be another set that are out of sight but that are busily building. And building back better and stronger.

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the PNP mentally cede the next general elections to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and spend the time building back the party. Already, many in the Opposition have convinced themselves that the PNP will suffer another blowout in the local government elections next year. That I believe to be a sound and wise conclusion.

NEXT YEAR WILL BE BAD FOR JLP ADMINISTRATION

On the assumption that by mid-year 2021 a vaccine for COVID-19 will be available to Jamaicans, we should not all convince ourselves that Jamaica will be back on the road to a glory that we never really had. Clawing back our way with National Housing Trust funds in tow will not bring any easy solutions.

Ferocious criminality seems to be let loose upon the land, and while we look to our Government to prescribe solutions on crime, we have to face the fact that the coffers do not present the Government with many options on recovery.

We know that once an economic state or order is disrupted, it never quite returns to the previous state. Remember, we saw the spurt of the gig economy after the recession in late 2007 to sometime in 2009.

The Opposition may fancy itself with a shot at the JLP as it struggles in late 2021. When I say ‘a shot’, I mean members of the PNP’s shadow Cabinet stridently stepping up in coherent voices and punching holes in government policies and allowing the Government little time to rest.

In the meantime, I would advise politicians like Damion Crawford to continue to speak furtively but to do so in someone’s back yard in hushed tones. Or go to the gully bank after everyone’s phones have been placed in a small pile.

- Mark Wignall is a political and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.