Opposition Leader Mark Golding has accused the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) of being complicit in the racial barbs being directed at him by members of the governing party.
Golding made the charge on Tuesday as he responded to a reporter’s question at a People’s National Party (PNP) press conference, where he was asked to comment on the increasing racial rhetoric being directed against him by his political opponents.
Last Thursday, the controversial Member of Parliament for St Catherine South West, Everald Warmington, launched a stinging racial attack on Golding as he addressed the JLP’s West Kingston constituency conference at the Tivoli Gardens High School.
Warmington declared that he would rather die than be led by a white, British man. “No white man can lead me,” he said he addressed riled up JLP supporters.
Warmington also chastised PNP supporters, referring to them in derogatory terms for what he said was their attacks on former JLP leader and Prime Minister Edward Seaga, a white Jamaican.
“So why yuh attack Edward Seaga and say him white and because dis yah white man (Golding) come, yuh say him can lead Jamaica. Over mi dead body,” Warmington shouted.
He went as far as to say Golding, who inherited British citizenship from his father who was a British national, should be put on a banana boat and sent back to the United Kingdom.
“Jamaica is a society that has a motto ‘Out of many, One people’. I am a born Jamaican, I didn’t choose my skin colour as no one chooses their skin colour.
I am a loyal Jamaican, a patriotic Jamaican and I’m giving of myself to serve the people of Jamaica,” Golding said Tuesday when he was asked to respond to the latest attacks against him.
He described it as a sad turn of events and expressed disappointment in the leadership of the JLP which he said has “tacitly encouraged this kind of behavior”. “To me it indicates a lack of principle on their part,” he remarked.
The Opposition leader noted that Jamaica was part of the family of nations and that we live in a world that is interconnected.
He said other countries and other races are looking on “and saying how is it that the government of Jamaica is allowing a junior minster or a former minister and two MPs to be using racial taunts and slurs as a source of attacking a political opponent”.
“It’s very bad form and it’s unfortunate for Jamaica and it really needs to stop,” Golding said. “Attempts to use my colour as a political battering ram, smacks of desperation on their part,” the PNP President added.
Describing the attacks on him as unprecedented, Golding said “I don’t think any political leader has faced what I’ve been facing in his regard.
And it is because they see the tide has turned against them and the people of Jamaica are fed up with them; the dishonesty, the lack of integrity and a government that has pursued policies that don’t benefit the people in a direct way. So people have lost hope, people want change”.
According to Golding, he was the embodiment of that change as the leader of the opposition “and therefore they’re trying to attack me”. He said he was also flattered in that “all they can really attack me on is the colour of my skin”.
Golding said he grew up in Jamaica, his wife is African-Jamaican “a beautiful woman, my children are born in Jamaica and I’m a proud Jamaican citizen”.
Golding renounced his British citizenship earlier this year after coming under pressure from members of the JLP who claimed he was not fit to lead the country by virtue of his dual nationality. While he renounced his British citizenship, Golding reminded that based on the constitution, citizens of the Commonwealth with Jamaican connections are allowed to sit in the Jamaican Parliament.
