Extra lessons for Andrew Holness

Carolyn Cooper, Contributor

Even though I didn't have a ticket, I was betting on Andrew Holness in the JLP sweepstakes. And it's not because I was fantasising that he would appoint me a senator if he managed to hold on to his crown as party leader. I'm clearly not cut out to be a good sheep.

I wasn't going to sign no generic, undated letter of resignation. That would be giving the party leader much too much power. A blank cheque! On the strength of my own signature, Holness would be entitled to draw all of my political capital out of the JLP bank.

And I could do absolutely nothing about it. I wouldn't even be able to say that my leader put a gun to my head and forced me to sign. Not a soul would believe me. Not even di duncest pikni inna primary school. Dog an all woulda laugh after me seh is licky-licky ketch me. Is so yu did desperate fi turn senator? And I would have to admit is true. I did it of my own free will. Mi never win no seat, so mi never have no chat. Since mi did waan go inna Parliament, mi had was to bow an do wat Andrew tell me. Please an thank yu, sir, fi mek mi turn senator. Quick, mek mi sign!

Fun and joke aside, the reason I placed my bet on Andrew is quite simple. 'Man a Yard' waited far too long to stand up for himself. Audley Shaw and all of the other candidates who were run-jostling to replace Bruce Golding after he committed political suicide should have insisted on free and fair elections to appoint a new party leader. They should not have agreed to 'select' Holness. As it turms out, the ill-considered decision to take the line of least resistance and just follow backa Andrew backfired.

BABY BRUCE ON STEROIDS

Holness' youthful zeal was not enough to defeat the well-seasoned Sister P. And he didn't know it. He believed the hype and called general elections prematurely. After taking a very bad whipping at the polls, Baby Bruce went on steroids. And he's bulked up. Andrew Holness now has serious political muscle which he's using to clout his own party members. In a move worthy of Brer Nansi, Holness backed his rogue senators into a corner and forced their resignation. Simply because at least one noisily supported his opponent.

It looks as if Tufton was right after all. Andrew Holness doesn't seem to want bright people around him. Worse, if they're men with balls. In bilingual Jamaica, the word 'bright' has two quite distinct meanings. In English, the adjective literally means reflecting light. By metaphorical extension, a bright person is academically clever, emitting lots of intellectual sparks. In Jamaican, bright is another story. It means not knowing your place and flying past your nest. In the case of Tufton and Williams, they were much too bright (in both senses of the word) for their own good. And for Andrew.

Even in English, being bright is not always enough. If you only have book brightness and not street smarts as well, your corner can be very dark. And it's not just a Jamaican issue. It's right across the region. One of the Mighty Sparrow's most amusing calypsoes is 'Dan Is the Man In the Van'. And, by the way, if we're really going to ban imports from Trinidad and Tobago, we'll have to forget about Jamaica Carnival. And what would our poor uptown people do if they could no longer get on bad in the streets once a year? God forbid, they would have to settle for regular dancehall daggerin! Banning imports from T&T is not the solution to the problem of managing free movement across CARICOM borders.

DAMN FOOLS

Sparrow's 'Dan Is the Man In the Van' mocks the nonsense verse in imported textbooks for Caribbean children, particularly the Nelson West Indian readers written by J.O. Cutteridge:

The poems and the lessons they send from England

Impress me they were trying to cultivate comedians

Comic books made more sense

Yu know it was fictitious without pretense

Cutteridge wanted to keep us in ignorance.

After giving several examples of silly rhymes, Sparrow concludes, "If mi head was bright, I would be a damn fool."

Tufton and Williams are probably feeling like damn fools. Instead of acting bright and showing off on Andrew, why didn't they just play fool to ketch wise? Holness would have been none the wiser and they could have all lived happily together after the elections. But it's not only Tufton and Williams who have learned their lesson the hard way. Andrew Holness must have realised by now that he has exposed his weakness by carelessly extinguishing two of the leading lights of the JLP. And it's not like the party has an excess of brightness to waste.

Holness ought to have taken extra lessons from Sister P. In comparison to her, he's at the GSAT stage of his political career. And he needs all the help he can get. Holness really should try to learn from Sister P how to manage dissent within his party.

The leadership race between Portia Simpson Miller and Peter Phillips was a classic contest of book brightness versus street smarts. Dr Phillips' PhD in political science was no match for Sister P's higher science: Portia Have Delegates. And having triumphed, Sister P didn't out-out Peter's bright light. She used it to help illuminate the way forward.

Ruel Reid and Nigel Clarke have now replaced the high-flyers. Presumably, they both know that however bright they may think they are, they dare not fly past their nest. Their wings will be clipped. All the same, I hope they haven't sheepishly signed generic, undated letters of resignation. Perhaps they weren't forced to suffer that indignity. Andrew Holness must have learnt his lesson. Demanding a blank cheque is no way to build political capital.