Crazy Uncle Everald

Daniel Thwaites

We all have a crazy uncle who spouts off at Christmas dinner. Crazy uncle has a rhetorical routine, generally starting from an unobjectionable premise or agreed problem ("hotels are blocking locals from the beaches and supermarkets are overcharging for Excelsior water crackers"), then slams it into a frightening conclusion ("let's burn all the hotels down, nationalise the supermarkets, then burn them down too!"). You sit there having suffered the mind-rape thinking, "Hold on! How him reach deh so?"

Now my mischievous and contrarian side generally wants to support Crazy Uncle Everald Warmington just because he's entertaining. Plus, I admire that he says what's on his mind, even though his most ardent supporter will admit that the quality of it is uneven.

But remember when he canned Parliament's Sectoral 'Debate' as "torture and rubbish"? That single observation was the high point of my parliamentary calendar in 2013. In any event, I'm suspicious of the media's moral indignation regarding Warmy, because indignation is a cheap and easily secured pleasure, and, like most cheap pleasures, is an indulgence. It is, to my mind, unquestionably better (and more entertaining) to have Crazy Uncle Everald in Parliament than not.

So anyway, alerted that there was controversy, I was listening and generally agreeing with his recent speech. Seems to me he was making some excellent points about the need for participation, but then there was a dramatic D'Angel derailment.

It began: "People need to participate in the governance process." OK. Mek sense! Then WHAM! He leapfrogged into allowing old women to die if their names aren't in his computer, because if "yuh didn't vote, I nah deal wid yuh ... . Nuh care how yuh sick and need it, nuh care how the old lady on the crutch - you didn't vote without an excuse, you don't talk to this member of parliament."

Holy crap! I just got whiplash from that logic.

When Warmy said, "Yuh cawn't hask for guvahment benefits when you refuse to participate in the guvahnance of yuh country," perhaps he'd forgotten how extensively the Government spreads benefits around. Every time people hop on to a JUTC bus, call the police, go to a health clinic, or send their children to school, they access a government benefit. Assuming Warmy isn't planning to check the voter ID of every bus passenger or parent, he must mean that the non-voters mustn't come to him.

shocking arrogation of authority

What a shocking arrogation of authority in the phrase "without an excuse"! Excuse to whom? And if Everald is the Lord sitting in judgement sifting wheat from chaff, who is St Peter with the keys to the Kingdom of Government benefit?

Still, it's the "nuh care how yuh sick and need it" comment that makes people retch. There's a sheer slab of ice, and a cold satanic calculation, in those words that have caused the revulsion, for it holds the elderly asthmatic writhing on the ground for want of medicine as valuable only for the ballot he ought to have cast.

Look, it IS a problem (across modern liberal democracies) that people don't inform themselves and don't participate. But actually, one sorely underappreciated liberal right is simply to be left alone. While I feel it is a mistake to idealise an approach to politics and life that prizes too much isolation, I'm grateful that I can choose to shut up, sit down, have and express no opinions. How grateful I am that I grew up in a country where I wasn't forced by Government to attend rallies for any Great Leader.

Regarding politics, it's essential to be able to say, "De two ah unnuh, guweh!" In fact, even if we had compulsory voting, there would need to be provisions to spoil the ballot, or pay a fine to register disapproval or disgust. You see, our forefathers fought for freedom and equality, not just the vote. Voting is sometimes an instrument to satisfy those hungers, but it can equally be an excuse to create them through oppression and injustice.

Consider how the most feral, power-hungry men scramble for votes. The voter becomes like a pretty woman, possessing beauty that powerful men covet, and therefore subject to their wrath and abuse. Just as beauty can be an affliction and the cause of terrific cruelty as arises when the weak have something the strong want, so it is with the vote.

That elemental symbol of smaddification is also the cause of horror, for, as we know, strong and ambitious men will kill and pen others up for it. A man's possession of a right is precisely why he may be harassed and hounded, and we know this is not an abstraction, but our history.

expressing support by voting

Moreover, we express support by voting, and disapproval by refusing to vote. Leaving aside the growing legions of unaligned, a PNP supporter could have decided to NOT vote in 2007 to protest Trafigura's stench. Similarly, a JLP supporter could have decided in 2011, after the OPM and the Attorney General's Department turned into Dudus' defence team, and after the layers of carefully constructed dishonesty referred to as 'Manatt', to stay home. These were entirely defensible, perhaps even praiseworthy, courses of action.

I note that given the firestorm, activists are arguing that Roger Clarke's "I scratch your back; you scratch mine" was a similar statement. But there was no talk of punishment if Mr Clarke's beneficiaries said, "Mi nah vote!", or "Mi a Labourite!", so it's not quite the "check-the-computer" model of political representation.

Others have asked why Holness, who was on stage, didn't immediately disagree with Warmy. I don't think that's fair, because nephew isn't responsible for Crazy Uncle's outbursts.

There will come a time when transformational leadership has to transform something, but Holness is still shaky, so Crazy Uncle Everald is too tough a nut to start on.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.