Season of mud-slinging

BY Gary Spaulding

BEWARE, THE mudfest is about to intensify! There were always disquieting signs that at least one of the mud banks was being replenished with amazing rapidity (both parties have mud banks, o/c propaganda machines).

And with Andrew Holness, the new prime minister, signalling that a national election will be called sooner rather than later, the floodgates have been released with venomous enthusiasm.

If these very strong indicators are anything to go by, the ensuing political campaign is promising to be a particularly dirty one with mud likely to be splashed left, right and centre. As is usually the case, the issues are ready to recede to the back seat.

Even the injection of good wit during the intense period will be thrown through the window. In short, it's a period when men (and women too) lose their reason and the characters of rivals are impugned at will and without mercy.

As is common with opposition parties, the People's National Party (PNP) mud-slinging mechanism is in high gear. The JLP, which has been in a quagmire over the past three years, has had to be expending its energy to ward off the pile-up of muck.

Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding had been muddied over a protracted period, and many are of the view that he has supplied much of the material being flung at him.

Lily-white image

Golding, his political image sullied, has been replaced by the seemingly unsoiled Holness. PNP supporters are therefore bent on besmirching Holness' seemingly lily-white image.

Influential members of the PNP machinery maintain that they can find adequate dirt on Holness.

The PNP's current situation has to be placed in context. The JLP was hit by the extradition request for Christopher Coke, and in a politically suicidal move, effectively muddled the arrangements to dispatch the accused gunrunner and drug trafficker to the United States.

People like Peter Phillips (in Parliament) and K.D. Knight (at the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry) drove the nail in the coffin of the Golding-led JLP. The JLP lost political support, while the PNP stayed ahead.

The PNP, which had been doing very little, but enjoying a sizeable lead, thanks to Phillips and Knight, and assisted by Golding himself, is now in a quandary and is in desperate search for a new victim.

Members of the PNP campaign team, as well as the party's secretariat, maintain that they have enough ammunition to be used against Holness.

Shoulder responsibility

The PNP has maintained that, through the principle of collective responsibility, Holness must shoulder some of the responsibi-lity for the ill-fated Manatt-Dudus extradition issue. The jury is out on just how an attack on Holness, based on the Manatt-Dudus fiasco, will resonate with Jamaicans. Indeed, Holness was one of the party's mouthpieces during the sordid episode.

On the other hand, repeated polls do not signal that even with the extradition episode the electorate is overly impressed with the Portia Simpson Miller-led PNP.

The proposed JEEP, which should have been providing the plethora of jobs that it claimed the governing JLP had failed to generate in its four years in office, seems to have been abandoned for the time being as party members are being distracted by Holness' arrival.

It is not new that in the leader-centric political environment that is Jamaica, mud-slinging of the leader and members of his team must take centre stage. However, the media has a responsibility not to yield to the juicy temptation of treating unsubstantiated claims, comments and accusations as news.

Gary Spaulding is a senior Gleaner writer. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com.