Domestic affairs

The following is the final of our four-part series of excerpts from volume two of former prime minister Edward Seaga's autobiography, My Life and Leadership: Hard Road to Travel.

This campaign to topple the leadership, launched to satisfy personal ambitions, had the effect of creating an image of a disintegrating Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) which would be unable to run the country at a time when the People's National Party (PNP)-led government was floundering in economic quicksand.

 It would have been a different matter if, among the "five", there was one clear leader who the people could support as an alternative but, among them, there was no chosen leadership, nor could any one of the 'five' gain the support of the others.

Five days after my broadcast, Dr Carl Stone, eminent political scientist, revealed the inner workings of the Gang of Five in a column written by him on October 22, 1990, entitled 'JLP power struggle'.

Carl Stone:

The Gleaner, Monday, October 15, 1990:

"The emotional issues that surround our preoccupation with party leaders in Jamaica complicate the matter further by clouding our judgement. Too many of us are either for or against Seaga or the 'Gang of Five' and, therefore, are unable to perceive the deeper meanings below the surface of this fascinating conflict inside the JLP.

"As the first writer to have made the public aware of the spy scandal inside the JLP, I owe it to my readers to give a clinical and dispassionate account of what the conflict is about, in keeping with my calling as a political scientist.

"The root of the leadership struggle in the JLP has to do with the agony of electoral defeat. The loss of the 1989 general election savaged the confidence of the JLP's collective leadership.

"Like all political parties that lose elections in our country, elements inside the JLP's leadership went in search of a scapegoat to blame for the defeat. The 'Gang of Five' really represents part of a group of persons inside the party who diagnosed that Seaga's leadership style was the cause of the weak electoral performance by the JLP in 1989. The logic of this simplistic analysis was that the JLP under Seaga ran the country very well and were good economic and financial managers, but that Seaga's personal unpopularity prevented the party getting the benefits of that achievement at the polls.

"The prescription was that Seaga should be dumped and a new, more popular, leader found to replace him. Pearnel Charles was being projected as the man for the job.

"Seaga himself took the defeat very badly and withdrew into introspection and inactivity, creating an opening for these elements to move against him.

"He gave everyone the impression that he was having second thoughts about continuing as leader of the JLP. He constantly voiced the opinion that he was not looking forward to the uphill task of having to reorganise the country's finances if, and when, power passed again from PNP to JLP. He is convinced that Mullings, Manley and Patterson are going to leave a financial mess for him to straighten out.

"The repeat performance of a very poor showing at the polls by the JLP in the 1990 Local Government election (in which Seaga showed very little interest or enthusiasm) set the stage for the 'dump-Seaga' faction to come out into the open and to actively plot to destabilise Seaga's leadership so as to provoke him into resignation.

"Charles has demonstrated that he is more astute than Seaga at political gamesmanship. He knew that he could not confront Seaga openly and was too intellectually intimidated by Eddie to even debate him in party councils.

"His alternative strategy was guerilla warfare involving hit-and-run tactics in the news media, working through a network of journalists who belong to the 'hate-Seaga' club.

"Although Charles was too afraid of Seaga to confront him inside the JLP, he used the media to create the impression that he was, in fact, challenging Eddie. The myth was created that Charles had Seaga on the run and that Seaga's spy operations were a desperate attempt to fight back. I myself was identified as a Seaga-hater and fed information intended to assist this clever power play.

"The truth of the matter is that the so-called challenge by Charles was a media event, cleverly planned to put Seaga under pressure, to create an image of a disunited and divided party and to establish the opening for Charles's leadership prospects to ripen.

"The strategy worked wonders up to a point. Seaga has been put under pressure. People he thought were loyal to him were denouncing him behind his back. The public image of a divided party caught up in espionage, intrigue and petty power plays called Seaga's leadership seriously into question. Eddie was on the run.

"Had Charles seized the time when he had Seaga on the ropes and challenged him for leadership of the JLP, he might have lost the battle but would probably have won the war. He would have rallied around him, all the JLP and he would have made a powerful claim for future leadership by standing up to Eddie.

"But, alas, Charles did not have the courage to follow through. Meetings were held for a majority of JLP MPs to propose Charles as Leader of the Opposition. But at the last minute, the plan was aborted out of fear.

"The plot against Seaga had the very opposite effect, compared to what his adversaries had expected. The evidence of disloyalty by leaders who he had brought into politics angered him and brought him back to life politically. The apathy and disinterest evaporated and Seaga came off the ropes fighting. And Seaga is a man who loves a fight and he fights to the finish. He has been energised and activated by the conflict and has re-asserted his tight grip over the JLP, mobilising new leadership elements around him from persons eager to replace the Gang of Five.

"Like many Jamaicans, I feel that the harsh punishment meted out to the Gang of Five is somewhat excessive. But if you fight with a leader and declare war on him, you cannot expect to continue as part of his leadership team. A parting of the ways had to come. Only time can heal some of the wounds of deep distrust that have been generated. The Five can still make it back, provided they are willing to do so on Eddie's terms.

"The public image of the divided JLP-party leadership activated a strong urge inside the party to settle the issue. When the 'Gang of Five' refused to accept a settlement on Seaga's terms, the only course left was the bloodletting that has now occurred.

"The case by the 'Gang of Five' against Seaga is not convincing. It is the desire for power, rather than Seaga's personality, that is the real issue. It seems rather strange that these JLP leaders suddenly discovered Seaga's autocratic leadership style at a time when Seaga was laid-back, inactive and completely withdrawn into himself.

"The 'Gang of Five' ought to have challenged Seaga for leadership but to do that effectively they would have had to have a lot of credits both inside and outside of the party. Why did Samuda not present his ideas on deregulation to the JLP? But their guerilla strategies of hit-and-run fighting in the media have done a lot of mischief to the JLP by weakening the party's public image. The cowardly character of that attack and its destabilisation of the JLP (not just Seaga) is what, in my view, deserves appropriate punishment.

"The current attempt by the 'Gang of Five' to smear Seaga as a racist is intellectually dishonest because they don't really believe it.

"Seaga's dominance of the JLP is greatly misunderstood. He is a difficult man to get along with and he is very demanding. In a low-intensity work culture in which most people operate at 30 per cent of their capacity, Seaga puts out 100 per cent, which is the main reason why he is disliked by many of his colleagues.

"He believes in tight party discipline and a strong chain of command that runs the party more like a military structure than a democratic organ. He has sacrificed democracy for organisational discipline. He gets away with it because he is better able to get things done by his methods than any other politician in the country. We may not like him but we are forced to acknowledge that his methods work in a country wracked by indiscipline, irresponsible behaviour and laziness.

"Seaga's dominance of the JLP is not just a reflection of his personality or leadership-style. Seaga has revolutionised the JLP from being a rag-tag populist party with no clear ideological direction into an ideas party that challenged PNP socialism in the '70s with a strong liberal-capitalist, ideological and intellectual offensive. Under Bustamante, the JLP was no intellectual match for the ideas party that was the PNP under Norman Manley. The ideas that drive the current JLP are the thoughts of Edward Seaga, and this gives him a level of intellectual dominance in the current JLP that has no parallel in the PNP or in the earlier JLP.

"Seaga single-handedly won the ideological battle with Michael Manley and the PNP is, to a point, where Manley, and the PNP are now echoing and articulating Seaga's liberal-capitalist ideology. Any objective analysis of politics in this country over the last two decades has to acknowledge that Seaga, not Manley, has been the political personality who has had the most decisive influence on our country's policy and ideological directions."