Constitution and Rights Blog

John Lynch is one of Jamaica's most respected tourism technocrats. He has served both private sector and Government with distinction for over thirty years. He has been an exceptional personal ambassador for Jamaica for many decades in the area of tourism promotion and public relations.

John is a black Jamaican who has achieved in an industry where black talent is frequently sidelined in favour of white or expatriate genius. It is obvious to many that John has achieved more than many of his contemporary colleagues to have reached the pinnacle of tourism in Jamaica.

Mr. Lynch has that crucial private sector attainment of having run a business successfully. Somebody who has run a business understands the problems of an industry which must be run like a business. Jamaican tourism has some serious challenges: the casino possibility, redlight district proposals, European super hotels, wages of hotel workers, competition from Cuba, etc.

Some Sandals workers think that they should receive more pay. How will Mr. Lynch handle that type of issue if it arises in a manner that needs his intervention?

It seems difficult for the Sandals chain to keep all unions locked out of their premises while Mr. Lynch is Chairman of the Tourist Board and this is going to be one of the delicate areas of his tenure.

Whatever the challenge, I think John Lynch will be equal to it during his tenure.

She used her position as Mayor of Kingston to propel herself into national politics at a time when women were confined to the kitchen and the nursery.Iris King was a winner despite the fact that history shows that in 1955, she was unable to defeat Hugh Shearer in a titanic critical struggle for the Kingston Western seat for the Legislative House.

Had Iris prevailed in that election, who knows how Jamaican history might have been re-written? Mr. Shearer won by one thousand and thirty-seven votes in a close election in which over fourteen thousand people voted in the constituency.

Iris was a winner despite the fact that she lost at the polls in 1955, because of the standard of her candidacy and the decency of her political tactics. The victory vaunted Mr. Shearer to political prominence.

Iris did not allow her defeat in 1955 to derail her political career or her passionate commitment to the welfare of inner city dwellers. She tried again.

In 1959, the year of my birth, Iris King was elected the MP for West Central Kingston. Iris was the first serious female politician to engage in inner city representation in Jamaica when there was no concrete jungle; there was merely a dungle of cardboard, zinc and wood, a colonial urban destination for feckless rural youth with no present and no past.

In 2006 in Jamaica, inner city people, united behind the election of Portia Simpson Miller, a product like Iris King of local KSAC politics, to be the first female Prime Minister of Jamaica.

For more than a year Portia offered a revolution of love and peace in the inner city and offered to Jamaica a social agenda based on beauty, blessings and brilliance and decidedly not on "bangarang".

However, there were and are in existence in Jamaica dark forces embedded in the Jamaican society. These anti-social forces have united to perpetuate the same status quo that Iris King battled against in her political career. These forces are not happy with the Jamaican Black Woman who is not an un-educated maid or factory worker earning nominal wage.

The Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, which was indecently quick to endorse as Minister of Finance a man who was unknown to public life, has never sought to finance a birthing center for women in Western Kingston.

The revolution commenced by Portia Simpson's election as Prime Minister, is a permanent one that has changed the topography of the Jamaican society forever. Any little girl from Trench Town, Maverly, Jones Town or Tivoli Gardens can become Prime Minister of Jamaica. So-called "Brownings" and white people have no monopoly on power, influence or political direction in Jamaica.

The old school tie has become a noose around the necks of those Jamaicans who rely on it. Those Jamaicans who, because of accident of birth, wish to exclude other Jamaicans considered to come from the wrong address from participation in the economy, will fail.

Edward Seaga economically empowered inner city women as higglers in the 1980s and Portia Simpson has completed their liberation by placing Jamaican womenhood at the apex of the Jamaican political pyramid. As Michigan and Smiley observed, the barriers have broken down.

Whether Portia is Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition she is a leader of the Jamaican people and she represents their value systems.

In history, many great political leaders have suffered defeat before emerging victorious and successful. John F Kennedy, Norman Manley, and Indira Gandhi all suffered major political set backs before achieving their ultimate political destiny. I predict that Portia Simpson has not yet achieved her ultimate political destiny.

The first woman that I developed an abiding respect for was my Mother, Audrey Stewart Rowe, who battled asthma while serving as a diplomatic wife in the United Kingdom while my father set up the first Jamaica passport office overseas. She reflected the courage and relentless scope of the Jamaican women of her era.

In the 1960s, Jamaicans were proud of their passports and wanted to hold onto their nationalities; today Jamaicans who have become United States Citizens now wish to serve in Parliament contrary to Constitutional fiat. "Why do the gentiles rage and the people imagine vain things?"

Iris King fought for independence, what would she think today of our Governor General swearing in foreign citizens as Ministers of Government?

Iris King was a patriot, I'm sure that if she were here she would applaud the Portia Simpson revolution: A revolution designed to inject love and harmony into the inner city, a revolution designed to create mobility out of the inner city, a revolution designed to achieve the goals of the people of the inner city without bloodshed, hatred, or political tribalism.

There are Jamaicans who consider themselves private sector Moguls who have treated our leader with scant respect. As the famous song says "When the right time comes" those individuals will receive the refreshing justice of the people. Have these moguls ever created any jobs in Whitfield Town? If these moguls are so rich and successful perhaps they should repay the money that they have borrowed from the Government.

It is not in the national interest for individuals who own major business enterprises to own major newspapers as well. The people's democratic will should never again be frustrated by moguls doing back door deals about casinos, while using large financial slush funds to purchase libelous advertising.

Jamaica needs anti-trust legislation so that these harmful conspiracies will never hamper our national progress or pervert our elections again.

My father, Ira D. Rowe, former President of the Court of Appeal, was most proud of the protection that he gave to inner city women through the elimination of the concept of Bastardy from Jamaican law.

In the name of Iris King and her successor Portia Simpson I wish to propose the legal theory that no Jamaica law be passed unless it is assessed within the peculiar and unique legal interest of those who reside in the inner city.

Legislation that is hostile to the interest of those in the inner city should be considered contrary to the Rule of Law; so delicately described by Professor Dicey of Oxford University in the last century.

It is contrary to the Rule of Law and to the Westminster Model to swear in known criminals as Ministers. It should be clearly illegal to convert peaceful rural constituencies into violent garrisons; it is also contrary to the Rule of Law for law enforcements officials to sit back quietly while this pernicious process proceeds. It is the women who have to cry as their sons are slaughtered.

Iris King and Portia Simpson are a part of the same continuum of history and the People's National Party Women's Movement has the sacred duty to preserve their ideals for posterity. Marcus Garvey respected and endorse the roll of women in politics. Iris King and Portia Simpson have walked spiritually hand-in-hand to make it a reality.

Thank you very much. I bring with me the very best wishes of the faculty of the University of Miami School of Law - Dean Dennis O. Lynch.

Under the auspices of Professor Cross of Nova Southeastern University, the Jamaica Diaspora Southeastern United States Chapter, and Jamaica Awareness Limited, the Most Honorable Edward Seaga gave a survey lecture on Jamaican culture to a large audience last week. The well-dressed assembly listened to a brilliant and well informed presentation.

Mr. Seaga spoke of the powerful underlying dynamics of Jamaican Culture and the fact that Jamaican Culture was very well defined. He spoke of the Jamaica Folk Culture and its hero, the underdog spider, Brer Anancy that has to survive by using his wits, particularly when the odds are against him.

Mr. Seaga tapped into his vast knowledge of informal Jamaican social practices and his personal involvement in the Jamaican musical industry to give the assembly insights into how Ska developed into Reggae; and how Reggae eventually developed into dance hall music. Mr. Seaga's presentation was scholarly, and his knowledge of early Jamaican music encyclopaedic.

Mr. Seaga examined the dietary practices of Jamaican mothers. He linked the dietary practices of Jamaican children with their deficient development and observed that 47 per cent of Jamaican mothers were still breast-feeding infants at six weeks of age. He noted that many Jamaican mothers supplemented the natural milk with milk powder and soya milk.

Mr. Seaga drew a direct connection between improper nutrition and the inability of some Jamaican children to engage in educational advancement.

Mr. Seaga also examined the tendency of Jamaican parents to engage in corporal punishment. He criticized this feature of Jamaican upbringing. He suggested that excessive corporal punishment leads to over-submissiveness by the child in later years or alternatively, hyper-aggression from the child during adolescence.

Mr. Seaga noted that poverty and malnutrition are critical elements in the ordinary development of "ghetto youths". He noted that there was a dramatic fall-off in attendance at inner-city schools on Mondays and Fridays, after their parents had received money on the previous Friday.

Mr. Seaga singled out Kapo as an example of independent and powerful artistic genius that came out of the ghetto and was fueled by ingenuity and an African ancestral impetus.

The large audience realised that they had been treated to a unique analysis of Jamaican socio-culture. This distinguished elder statesman was forced to bow to the audience as he responded to the wave of continuous applause at the end of his presentation.