The political schizophrenia in
One does not stay at holes that are waterless. — Ovambo proverb, Namibia
In the 1992 US presidential debate with George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, Bush committed a major unforced error. He looked at his watch repeatedly. Polls at the end of the debate revealed that a majority of Americans were livid with Bush’s watch-watching obsession. Where did he have to go many asked?
Veteran American journalist Jim Lehrer recounted years later that Clinton told him: “If I had looked at my watch as Bush did, it would not have mattered.” Why? Lehrer says, “The only reason it [Bush’s watch-watching] mattered was because it fulfilled something already in the wind.” Put another way, politicians have pre-existing political conditions. Uncontrolled, these maladies will sprout up like thorns and choke their political objectives to death.
During much of his political career Bush was viewed as severely detached from the angst of most Americans. His robotic-like watch-watching in the 1992 presidential debates merely illuminated his Achilles heel.
Some Still remember
Pronouncements from a meeting involving Dr Peter Phillips, leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and president of the People’s National Party (PNP), with councillors and councillor-caretakers, at The Mico University College, last Sunday, reminded me of Bush’s ill-fated watch-watching buffoonery, and Jim Lehrer sagelike remark about fulfilment of “something already in the wind”.
Dr Phillips and the PNP seem totally oblivious to the torrential wind of hypocrisy which swirls around them, particularly on matters of corruption, every time they try to don the cloak of moral rectitude. In 2015, former Education Minister Ronald Thwaites told us that the “PNP is a morals party”. (The Gleaner, May 1, 2015) A quick Google search shows that the PNP’S continuous attempts to don the paraphernalia of a moral superstar have made them look, as we say in local parlance, “like heng-pon-nail” (wearing totally ill-fitting clothes).
Phillips’s repeated attempts to brand this Andrew
Holness-led Administration as corrupt have proven tremendously ineffective, among other reasons, because PNP administrations are tainted and haunted by a litany of costly money scandals, misappropriation of public funds, and rank corruption as evidenced in numerous reports from contractors general, independent committee reports, and commissions of inquiry. I have cited abundant proof from such documents in previous articles.
Last year the PNP went on an evangelical tour which they said was intended to expose corruption in the Holness Administration. They did not win many converts. It is not difficult to understand why.
Recall these insightful comments from a citizen-bystander at a sparsely attended demonstration which was spearheaded by Dr Phillips in Montego Bay, St James. He remarked: “And I notice di PNP is going around talking about clean up corruption, and Andrew Holness about corruption. But, in my opinion, PNP cannot come to Montego Bay or to Jamaica come speak about corruption. They can’t come and tell me to clean up the garbage out of my yard when their yard also full of garbage. When my yard is clean and their yard is full of garbage, the virus or whatever going still continue, going spread. So they don’t have moral authority to come tell about garbage when their yard is full of garbage. And the placard they have here this morning, I would like to see the Mandeville Parish Council scandal on that, too. And then they will be speaking to the people. Yuh cyaan deh come a talk about one side, while you also have the same epidemic.” (TVJ News, July 18, 2019)
The PNP should rightly be taking a penitent posture in sackcloth and ashes, especially for the numerous money scandals over which it has presided. Instead, the PNP continues to close its eyes to reality, maybe in the hope that its costly blunders, which Google faithfully preserves, will disappear. Dr Phillips needs to understand that the lived experience of the electorate cannot be eviscerated so easily. Those, particularly on social media, who retail and wholesale the narrative that Phillips became PNP president only in 2017 and, therefore, should be separated from the stains of past PNP administrations are doing him a huge disservice.
Dr Phillips joined the PNP in 1989. Phillips became a Member of Parliament in 1994 (Sunday Observer, March 6, 2017). Since 1989 he has held a series of high-level posts in the party and under ex-prime ministers P J Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller. Between 1995 and 1997 Phillips was the minister of health. He was transport and works minister from 1998 to October 2001. And from 2011 to 2016 he was minister of finance and de facto prime minister. The 18 ½ period between February 1989 and September 2007 witnessed some of the most egregious and corrupt acts in Government since 1962. Why did Dr Phillips not resign and/ or separate himself from those PNP administrations?
I do not believe incessant complaining, pie-in-the-sky promises, fake news, misguided bluster, empty chat, political deflection, “bad mind”, threats of street demonstrations, political schizophrenia, 1984 Orwellian-type strategies, and/or attempts at filibuster will help the PNP in its bid to return to Jamaica House.
Folks want impact not empty rhetoric. They want bankable solutions to especially long-standing problems. They want issues which affect their pockets and dinner tables to be addressed... and urgently.
Only a grand, contrite, and national mea culpa by the PNP will suffice. In the absence of that, the PNP will continue along a political trajectory that will likely culminate in another general election defeat.
A leader must Set the tone
Consider this banner headline: ‘Phillips accuses PM of shielding Vaz...wants investigation into Holywell controversy’. The news item noted this, among other things: “Opposition Leader Dr Peter
Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.
Charlie Brown is a Jamaican who was deported from the United States after serving in the militery there. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or charliebrown1004@gmail.com
non-criminal. And, they can be broken into six categories — displaced, desperate, damaged, rich, resourceful, or dangerous.
A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that an estimated 92 veterans were deported from 2013 to 2018 to various countries. But the numbers are far higher, according to groups of deported veterans in Jamaica and Mexico — two countries with high rates of criminal deported migrants. Before this report, no one knew how many veterans had been deported because the US Government didn’t keep track. And while the report uses information from multiple federal government agencies to quantify their numbers over the past six years, the total number of veterans who’ve been deported remains unclear.
Although the Ministry of National Security accepts deportees on a regular basis — and is supposed to have a deportee monitoring unit — it is unclear to local officials how many are veterans with military training and tactics because the US and Government of Jamaica (GOJ) data are not synchronized. At times, officials at the Passport Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) are unable to find meaningful statistics on people who are deported.
The GAO report also found that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “did not consistently follow its policies involving veterans who were placed in removal proceedings”. Those policies include considering a veteran’s military service during removal proceedings. “Any action taken by ICE that may result in the removal of an individual with military service must be authorised by the senior leadership in the field office following an evaluation by local counsel... Still, applicable law requires ICE to mandatorily detain and process for removal individuals who have been convicted of aggravated felonies,” the report said.
In Jamaica, once deported, if deportees are not self-sufficient (having means of survival in order to re-integrate into the society without hindrance despite the stigma) without the assistance of families or friends, non-government organisations (NGOS), or the Government to a less extent, criminal-minded veterans have been forced to, or intentionally, seek solace in well-organised criminal gangs. And, with the elite training and experience attained from the US armed
forces, they become ‘civilian commandos’ who can challenge the best foreign force, if needs be, so it does not take a rocket scientist to assess the end results as seen in the Horizon Park confrontation that put other law-abiding deported veterans’ lives at risk.
Some veterans say they’ve been forced to live in exile without medical care for the injuries they sustained in war. They’ve been deported to a country in which they are unable to adjust. It has been decades since some lived in the US and, despite the fact that they are Jamaicans, they don’t even understand the language or how to reintegrate into the society. While veterans with service-related injuries have access to medical care, since removal there are no access in Jamaica, so they have to source their own medical funds. Some went to the US as children and as legal permanent residents. As adults, 18 and over, they enrolled in the military with the promise of expedited citizenship, which never happened based on a variety of reasons, like long deployments to various places stateside and overseas, while some might have ignored the process.
After serving, they got in trouble with the law in various states with different laws. And there are some who are victims of the retroactive effect of the IIRIRA. It’s a common story for veterans returning home from battle. However, unlike citizen veterans who run afoul of the law, legal permanent residents will be deported if they are convicted of certain crimes. They also have one thing in common — to return to the country they served or, at the very least, they want to receive access to medical care from the US Government, but deported veterans have few options for health care outside the US, and it’s harming the most vulnerable. Some veterans are totally heavily depressed and use substances to cope with their depression, desperation, anger, or service-related mental health issues.
As a result, society is faced with veterans who are becoming sicker, and more likely become suicidal, because they are not receiving any care, or the care that they’re receiving is not adequate for their circumstances. Some are being deported illegally, and are facing anger and frustration that they meted out on the society in general.
This problem is two-fold, between the US (the remover) and GOJ (the receiver). It requires a two-fold solution.