Mark Wignall | High-tension shock from United States

I’ll take a light bet that the most important item on the menu of most Jamaicans will not be the general elections due September this year. There is no doubt that we think about it at many moments in all situations, but as one bar owner told me recently: “I don’t know about you, but politics stresses me out. Local and foreign. Everything I do in my life now is trying to rid my life of politics. I hate it passionately.”

She lives in a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) garrison, and in general, she votes for the JLP. In the year when JLP politicians awarded themselves massive salary increases, she told me: “Me just so done with JLP. Dem will never get my vote.” By the early part of the next year, a political matter splashed out in our consciousness, and she was back firmly in the JLP camp. Most political pollsters would count her somewhere between 80 to 100 per cent of a vote.

Most Jamaicans over the age of 65 spend time dwelling on political matters in Washington, DC. Most are in the anti-Trump camp, but it must be stated that too high a percentage of Jamaican men find favour with his low character, shamelessness, and free exercise of political cruelty.

In the race between the JLP’s Andrew Holness (the PM) and the Opposition People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) Mark Golding the opinion polls are not quite settled on registering a clear majority of one party over the other. There have been times when Golding brought a shock to the system and made Holness nervous about moving close to calling an election.

The scatter-shot type of governance taking place in Washington is reminiscent of a children’s romper room. Somehow, grown men ably assisted by a team of milk maids have taken over the process of governance. Countries like Jamaica are caught up in the winds of this most dangerous social and economic tornado.

Increasingly, I am seeing US news websites taking dives into the likelihood that Trump could be an agent of Russia and is more actively involved in carrying out the wishes of Putin. His 180 degrees on Ukraine/Zelenskyy and seemingly sudden embrace of Putin is scary, but the path was long plotted from the time Trump was first plugged in.

More importantly, Trump has keenly learned from his first run the constitutional weaknesses in that sacred US document and at just about all moments in his second run, he has punched holes in US laws and stampeded over the social, political, and economic order.

Disorder is the new normal in America. In preparation for a Putin handover .

THE SH**** COUNTRIES

It must not be forgotten that Donald Trump more than hinted that smaller countries south of America and populated with dark-skinned people, you know, just like Jamaica, are ideally suited for life in the mountain of a smelly garbage heap.

Keeping this in mind, we have to bear in mind that any extensions to the 1980s Caribbean Basin Initiative are about to be locked down. In the extent to which a ‘kinder face’ of the US was shown to countries needing welfare assistance and the exercise of soft power, programmes like USAID were launched. Global health programmes like the WHO and the CDC in the America First age will sputter, and to the extent that the US contributes, run to neutral and then stall. .

It has become factual that American foreign policy under Trump comes with a lot of the mental baggage inside Trump. The ‘bright’boys’ in the Office of the Prime Minister need to be well-connected political futurists who are able to not just to read the tea leaves but to properly assess the toxicity of the batch.

HOLNESS OR GOLDING OR TRUMP

In early 1981, after Ronald Reagan had swept to victory in 1980 and Eddie Seaga of the JLP had done the same, Seaga was given the privilege of being the first foreign leader to meet with Reagan.

US presidents tend to make a big pretence of liking the foreign leaders who are in no way allied to them in terms of military power and economic wealth. Donald Trump is not that sort of a person.

Although I can hardly see a Trump one-on-one with any Caribbean leader on the horizon, I am left to wonder which one of our leaders would do best with Trump. I suspect that Holness would top Golding simply because Holness should be more connected to the wider, more global diplomatic community than Golding. Or would Trump, a man triggered by skin colour, take on to Golding based on that level of trivia.

Many Jamaican men like Trump because of his similarity in behaviour to them. Too many of our men are coarse in their relationship with women, Trump is cool with that. Many Jamaican men encourage their friends to fool around with women outside of their marriages. Trump is cool with that. Many Jamaican men are serial abusers of women. Trump is cool being surrounded by such men.

Jamaica has long had a warm relationship in our health system with Cuban doctors. This has transcended the hangover of the political divisiveness of the 1970s to 2025. Because the Trump administration is totally without policy nuance, if Secretary of State Marco Rubio is ordered to ‘bun bad lamp’ on Cuban assistance in the Caribbean, we are going to be those hurt in the shortage of medical personnel.

One of the most difficult steps for any of our political leaders to make is to be cornered into making a definitive statement about the US president and a controversy with the Caribbean. If it comes before the election, it would probably take the following form.

Golding: “The US president said, recently … The PNP is at this moment having deep policy discussions and as soon as a position supported by most of our groups, the secretariat, and the broader leadership is arrived at, we will respond in a timely manner.”

Holness: “As you know, this party is not just trying to win an election. It is the ruling administration, and we just cannot press a button to stop governance. We believe that the president must do what is right for America. And we here at home must do what is right for our people. A release from the secretariat will be duly issued. ”

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.