For some reason this article in the Jamaica Gleaner made me re-visit an old post I made in which I looked at the similarities along a despotic arc of Caribbean leaders.
Digesting the rhetoric in the Gleaner article made me perhaps a little sympathetic toward Bruce Golding. For while I respect his obvious intellectual abilities, and appreciate his eloquence, and his seemingly balanced elder statesman-like demeanor, my cynical side thinks he is a hot air balloon that will soon be deflated.
I swear that Bruce Golding is The Wiz and we'll soon all see him for the bumbling car salesman that he is.
The struggle I currently face is that I now recognize a number of similarities between Bruce Golding and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Both are (at least at face value in the case of one) amazingly brilliant, sophisticated, articulate and embody all that one could want from a world leader, especially of African descent....and yet they are both fuck ups at varying degrees.
Aristide is the first democratically elected President of Haiti. That title cannot be taken away from him, and his ascent from the pulpit to the palace is the stuff of post-emancipation dreams. He is Bookman, he is L'ouverture, he is Dessalines and spiritually I am sure he connected with these ancestral spirits.
Golding's is not so much a tale of rags to riches as it is a tale of the prodigious child of the bourgeoisie ascending to the role for which he was pre-destined. But in assuming this role of Prime Minister he has attempted to bring a level of intellect and sophistication that has not been seen since Michael Manley. In some respects he has succeeded but his legacy already has him playing the role of a disappointment despite being in office at this very moment. Stuff like this doesn't help his cause.
Of course those that describe these leaders as fuck ups generally aren't those that got them elected in the first place. Working class Haitians and Jamaicans are less concerned with or are less adept at dissecting the intellect of these messianic figures. For them these bright men speaking about advancing the welfare of the poor are earnest and sincere in their campaigns. It is middle and upper class people that note the cynicism that stains the back of their tongues.
Artistide for example was given every opportunity to prove himself. The elites, many would argue, opened the door for his ascent therefore validating the flood of popular support from the peasantry, despite their reservations given his talk of equality, black upliftment, and common diginity. The subjugation of dutty-trousers black people as a tool for protecting the status quo of the beige-skinned suit-wearing elites was something Aristide's rhetoric and social philosophy threatened. His forced removal by the true powers that be (obviously not the ones residing at the Palace) revealed the love/hate relationship he had with the elite that publicly he despised but privately he courted. His final expulsion and decade-long forced exile was really a matter of his propensity to fuck things up no longer being tolerated. The rebel armies of the north becoming increasingly restive, the anarchic tendencies of the Police and the opposing Chimeres (gangs of criminal enforcers he created and called the base of his party), and Artistide's own failure to admit his complicity was too much to bear. Aristide of course will tell you his kidnapping was the result of the capitalist powers in America, Canada, and France becoming frustrated with his affinity for poor black skinned people and impatient with his reluctance to allow them to continue to exploit Haiti's natural and human resources. His excuse is palatable only at face value. He fucked things up and was too naive or arrogant to understand....he still is for that matter.
Bruce Golding on the other hand continues on this bumbling weekly demonstration of exactly how bright people fuck shit up. From Eddie Seaga telling the nation exactly what he thinks of Bruce Golding, to the Private Sector elites revealing their own disenchantment with Golding and his government, Bruce Golding in his short tenure has been the biggest fuck up in the history of Jamaican politics.
These observations have cemented in my mind the need for humility in all things, and also that not all that glitters is gold.
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