Power and personality

Robert Buddan, Gleaner Writer

Bruce Golding ends his third year as prime minister much like he had started. He began by trying to establish an image of himself as a national leader of prime-ministerial material. His handlers came up with the label of 'driver' to suggest he was 'in charge' and had a 'sense of direction'. Being 'in charge' was meant to dispel the view that he was a mere pawn of the power of the money that was behind him. 'Sense of direction' was meant to contest the view that he was a flip-flopper, saying or doing one thing at one time, and a very different thing at another time.

Another bit of image-making was more subtle. It was more the media's doing. It was about playing to a caricature in the Jamaican subconscious of respectable 'brown man' leadership which projected Golding as knowledgeable, articulate and urbane. In contrast, Portia Simpson Miller was made to fit the black-woman archetype, similarly lodged in the collective Jamaican subconscious. This was the image of the emotional, quarrelsome and unpolished type. The campaign was designed to make Jamaicans feel comfortable with Golding and anxious about Simpson Miller.

There was another image of Golding - that of Golding the reformer. It was a projection from Golding's own career as the public had come to see it. Personalities seek or use a conversion to achieve absolution for themselves from failure in a discredited former role. They champion a new cause, adopting a different persona that separates them from the part of them they want to reject for a new personality that is representative of what they want to be. They convince themselves that they have changed. This conversion experience is a healing in its own way.

Then there is the raw Golding. This is not an image. It is the Golding personality that enjoys power. It is Golding the politician. It is that side of the power personality that demeans, belittles and threatens others. It is the arrogant side of power. It was this side that said the People's National Party (PNP) had termites in their brain, that he would tolerate no gays in his Cabinet, and that attacked the Americans, saying constitutional rights did not begin in Liguanea. It is that part of him that chose to side with power over law and ethics to protect the presumed power base of his politics, 'Dudus' Coke.

The 'power personality'

Political psychologists study what they call the 'power personality'. It is this 'power personality' that has come to dominate Golding's leadership style. The campaign slogan, 'driver', was dropped soon after the election. The image of the urbane leader is hard to defend. It has been tarnished by the flaws of character, specifically the reckless use of power to protect a fugitive and to be skimpy with the truth about it. Golding the reformer is also hard to defend. It is the society that now insists that Golding takes up reforms in light of the Coke saga.

The power personality has come to the fore because Golding has found himself in survival mode. Within three years of becoming prime minister, he has faced a censure motion, calls to resign and a public that believes he has not been truthful. They believe he has lost the moral authority to govern. He has lost trust.

Polls are being done about who his likely successor could be. Edward Seaga said he should give up western Kingston because he was not a fitting member of Parliament and constituency leader. The National Democratic Movement (NDM) said he was a sell-out. His national popularity has dropped.

Some leaders are unpopular at home but liked abroad. Not so with Golding. He has caused great consternation among concerned Jamaicans overseas over their country's international image. He once promised Raul Castro that he would facilitate dialogue between Cuba and the United States. Looking back, it was a cruel joke. Golding has not even once visited the United States on Government business. The Americans have been angry with him. The success of his inaugural chairmanship of CARICOM, too, was doubtful. Many CARICOM heads of government did not attend.

I believe that early in his term, his party sought to make him a regional and even international leader of the kind that Michael Manley or P.J. Patterson was. That did not happen. The empty promise to Raul Castro exposed a side of Golding that must have known he would have had little standing with the Americans, knowing what he knew about the Coke indictment. His opposition to and then embrace of the Venezuela initiative, PetroCaribe, would not have been lost on Hugo Chavez. The decision not to visit China, and then to do so after the PNP delegation went, was a sign of an opportunistic approach to China.

The absence of many CARICOM leaders from the CARICOM summit that he chaired in July was an obvious sign for him. And the failure to visit or to obtain an invitation for an official visit to Washington is not to be lost on us. There seems to be great international doubt about his character.

Claim to leadership

Golding now claims leadership as a crime-fighter. That is a cruel irony. If this is Golding the 'driver', we want to know what the real motivation driving him is. Is it really about Golding the survivor? The power personality knows when it is cornered and when power can be taken away. It needs power like a baby needs milk. His former NDM colleagues speak of how he had seemed to lose interest, energy and focus after the election defeat in 1997. The JLP was where power lay, not the NDM. It was the breast from which Golding would go back to suck.

The power personality likes to fight and to stick it out to the end, however deviously. The society wants Golding to come clean and tell the truth. He and his party have chosen, not the humble route, but the aggressive route. They say that despite the recent email revelations about the Government's dealings with Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, there is nothing more to say. They have already said what they will. There will be no more apologies, clarifications or explanations, and there will be no discipline of anyone who has acted improperly, least of all of Golding himself.

Golding and his team will, in fact, go around the country to reinforce their version of the Coke-Manatt saga instead. They will do this despite criticising others that the Manatt issue is being used as a distraction and the country needs to focus on solving its problems. Rather than doing the work of government, the Government will go around the country to do the work of the party. It will spend the public's time and money on their campaign to disguise the truth and promote a new image of Golding.

Golding is also willing to get into a tracing match with The Gleaner, saying or insinuating that it, and its managing director, Oliver Clarke, have a political agenda and are running political propaganda against him. Let's see how far his sense of power will take him in that fight.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.