Another knockout from Iron Mike Henry
MIKE HENRY was 41 years old when he suited up for the first time to walk on to the political playing field of general elections.
The year was 1976, and Henry challenged O.D. Ramtallie in the Clarendon Central constituency and lost by 884 votes. Henry’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) only managed 13 seats in that election, which was won by the People’s National Party (PNP) with 47 seats.
Four years later, Henry turned the tables on Ramtallie, beating him by 3,475 votes. The JLP won those elections by a landslide, picking up 51 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. It was the start of a 10-term winning spree for the ‘Roaring Lion’.
Henry on Thursday registered a 3,003-vote majority over the PNP’s Zuleika Jess. He polled 6,745 votes to Jess’ 3,742.
Henry, 85, has long indicated that he would only step away from representational politics if he found himself unable to offer incisive leadership. In a 2006 interview with The Gleaner, Henry rejected the label of being an ageing politician.
“I am not going to go out like a lamb, I am going to go out with the roar of a lion ... . I have a young man sitting in my office,” he said.
“I have asked his son to stand by and push me in the wheelchair down to Parliament. And I have asked the daughter of another one to have the blood transfusion holder so that when they push me down Duke Street.”
Now, 14 years later, Henry is still going.
“Because of my humanitarianism, I
1980 – O.D. Ramtallie by 3,475 votes
1983 – Unopposed
1989 – Donna Scott Bhoorasingh by 482
1993 – Derrick Webb by 1,626
1997 – Coy Grandison (PNP) by 2,746 and Richard Chen (NDM) 7,062
2002 – Leopold Hylton by 2,155
2007 – Neil McGill by 3,509
2011 – Richard Watson by
3,025
2016 – Norma Lindsay by
4,594
deal with the people’s problems. I have gone through four generations, going for my fifth generation, because I can see the issues I have to address in the fifth generation,” Henry said.
Henry shares the record with Karl Samuda and Edward Seaga as the persons to have been elected to the House of Representatives on the most occasions. He feels that he has “defied all odds” given that he served under a People’s National Party government for the majority of his parliamentary life.
“I feel honoured,” he said, adding that he has been able to serve 40 years as a parliamentarian “without going through Senate ... elected by the people and responded to by the people.”
“The reality lies in the fact the I have done this against the odds because most of the time, the PNP has been the government,” said Henry, who spent 22 years in opposition.
“The greater portion of my time in parliament would have been under the Opposition and as is customary to politics, you don’t get the help when the other government is in power.”
“I can now finish up some legacy programmes.”