Dawn Ritch, Columnist

When I wrote last week that "The only insult left is that one day the (Vale Royal) talks become gridlocked and the publisher of this or that newspaper is asked to adjudicate the matter.", I had hoped it was far-fetched. Imagine my horror to see something similar actually recommended, after the column was submitted, by Montego Bay's eminent Roman Catholic Bishop, the Most Reverend Charles DuFour.

Speaking at a funeral, DuFour said: "It is time that this National Security Council incorporate the Opposition Spokesman on National Security, and, perhaps, as well, carefully screened leaders of civil society." Who could have thought that something like this would actually enter anyone's head, except in a time of political correctness gone mad?

The prospect of carefully screening leaders of civil society is not an especially cheerful one. The media's endless fascination with the minutiae of life is often to the exclusion of what really is pertinent. I can see, therefore, many months of public debate to determine the criteria of the screening, whether the prompt payment of utility bills or the lack of a police record. And while all of this exposure and public humiliation is taking place, murder will be on the rise unchecked.

Derrick Smith has the security portfolio and if he can't do the job, he should simply get out of the way. The object of governance, much less civil society, ought not to be desperate measures to buttress incompetence with committees designed purely to make repeated failure more palatable. This is what went on for 14 years under P.J. Patterson. He found no shortage of leaders in civil society ready and willing to chair these committees and give legitimacy to the nonsense he was doing.

secret agreements

Every time the then Prime Minister Patterson stood in the House of Representatives, announcing yet another initiative or piece of legislation that the ruling People's National Party (PNP) had agreed to enact at the suggestion of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), I cringed. Parliament had become a mere rubber stamp for secret agreements arrived at elsewhere between the two major political parties.

In my opinion, this is the major reason why he remained in office so long. He had co-opted Her Majesty's loyal Opposition into governance itself by flattering their egos, talking to them all the time, and even publicly taking on many of their suggestions.

Nobody cared whether the suggestions made sense or not, or were even beneficial to the country. All anybody cared about was that the Government and Opposition were talking to each other, and by so doing, setting an example to the rest of the country. The appearance of civility was of far more importance than the reality of ineffectual governance, bordering on frequently flagrant misrule.

With public opinion overwhelmingly in favour of collaboration, consensus and talks between the two parties, Patterson effectively managed to sap the strength of the Opposition, and so, maintain himself and the PNP in power. Along the way, he earned himself the reputation of being non-confrontational, and was and still is, held up as an example to others. But he was just a con artist, and the then Opposition Leader Edward Seaga an opportunist. Throughout the exercise, Jamaica suffered and slipped into violence, chaos and economic decline.

Last Saturday, this newspaper wrote an editorial entitled "On with the (Vale Royal) talks". Among other things, the editorial stated that, "in this regard, we suggest that a working group sift through the manifestos of the JLP and PNP to determine the policies on which the positions are congruent or nearly so. These can then be earmarked for priority implementation." This sounds to me like a call from media to reconcile the manifestos of the two major political parties. If governance were just a dry martini, to be shaken and not stirred, then anybody could be James Bond and there would be no need for a government. All anyone would have to do was sit down and write a book, and save himself the contentiousness of real life.

whose credit?

Were the party manifestos to be reconciled and the priorities implemented, who or what would get the credit? Which political party is going to campaign on the basis of what it has agreed with its political opponents? If that were the case, they might as well use the same advertising agency and have the same slogan. This is a blatant attempt to find a back door into government. This is doubtless why there is so much public enthusiasm for the resumption of the Vale Royal talks. They constitute the best back door yet devised.

The irony is that the greatest losers are the Opposition and the country. The Opposition, because it enables the Government to stay in power by actively collaborating with it, and the country, because the Opposition benches have been gelded. This suits no one except the government of the day, and those anxious for a few column inches at any price. It certainly doesn't make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.

The resumption of the Vale Royal talks is, therefore, perfectly suited to the Bruce Golding administration. Anybody with a razor-thin margin of victory is going to be desperately interested in any measures that can serve to keep him or her in power. From the night he won, he's been wanting to sit down and talk with Portia Simpson Miller, even though his invitations have always been indirect and through the media. Now he has her exactly where he wants her, because she has agreed to the resumption of bipartisan talks. Will she prove an opportunist like Seaga, or will she manage to preserve her political integrity?

Vale Royal talks are an entanglement that she ought to have avoided with all her might. But even she, it seems, is not greater than her party. Nevertheless, Simpson Miller has succeeded in getting herself off the front pages and out of people's commentaries. The focus of public attention is gradually returning to where it belongs, namely, the performance of the party in power. I fear, however, that she may have paid too high a price.

It seems almost too coincidental that at the moment she decides to return to bipartisan talks, and an internal party report on the loss of the general election begins to circulate, that PNP vice-president Dr. Peter Phillips should see fit to give interviews to this newspaper on his leadership aspirations. One is not accustomed to seeing such a display of ambulance-chasing in the PNP. In the JLP, there was a constant jockeying for position in the newspapers and on radio, whether or not there were vacancies. On the other hand, even when there were obvious vacancies in the PNP, nobody made a move until the president gave the go-ahead. All that protocol seems now to be a thing of the past, and the party will be the poorer for it.

An Opposition party with this kind of dubious internal wrangling is in danger of being led around by the nose in the Vale Royal talks. We've seen it before. God willing we will not have to see it again.