Mark Wignall | Sipping at the cruelty cup

The NBC online title blared, “US citizen child recovering from brain cancer deported to Mexico with undocumented parents.”

The cynical may say that showing a human face when executing government policy is highly inefficient, both philosophically and logistically. But what is to be done when inhumanity is baked into the policy?

The party that administers government in Jamaica is the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The JLP has a fraternal relationship with the GOP (Republican) in the United States. Currently, the GOP holds the presidency, the House, and the Senate.

Could we ask if there ever was a time in the past when that relationship could be used as leverage to ‘free us from the burdens’ of America’s exercise of soft power? Seaga had MVP status from Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, but to back up, at the other end we may have ‘given cause’ for the CIA to sniff around and leave its odour in Jamaica in the 1970s as Manley grew too close to Fidel at that Cold War time.

Many years later, that political animus, which was given birth by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, must be reanimated because Donald Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, are in for many more sips of the cruelty juice.

The People’s National Party (PNP) and the JLP have long moved past ideological stances on medical assistance from Cuba. Our hospitals are significantly populated with 400 Cuban medical doctors, specialists, and nurses and have been so in the times of the PNP and JLP. And no information exists to show that the Cubans are teaching our young people how to build bombs and terrorise urban centres in the US. Now, improper recruiting of labour is the latest bugaboo.

And thus, we are into a long season of hate and cruelty, and it has gone viral as America rushes headlong into misdirection by President Donald Trump while becoming a global threat to economic stability via tariffs and world peace.

Now we are told that if our leaders do not sever their ties with the Cuban medical assistance/link, our leaders must be prepared to give up their individual US visas.

Like Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy of a few weeks ago, it is now our time to be in the barrel. As far as Rubio and Trump are concerned, a country like Jamaica and others in CARICOM are propping up the Cuban regime by recruiting its labour. It is to be seen if more focused meet and greet will budge the Trump regime from its present stance. I would suggest that we ought to expect the worst.

WAITING IN FEAR. TARIFFS, ELECTIONS

The price of eggs on average in the US in mid-March is more expensive than in Jamaica at a time when the item is on the increase here. In Jamaica, eggs are approximately US$5.35 per dozen whereas in the United States they are US$7.

But it all depends which Jamaica you are in. It is cheaper at the supermarket counter. At the edge of the economically depressed community, eggs are bought in twos, threes, and singles – $70 each. Frankfurters are sold the same. Individually or in twos or threes.

The recent Budget readout by the new finance minister is a first in terms of a woman breaking through that glass ceiling. Fayval Williams is good and honest – big up to the lady. We have come a long way from the perilous days of Dr Omar Davies, the square-holed finance minister who could not quite cut it in a world where nuanced direct and tangential thinking in a round-holed economy was required.

The Budget is politically sound in that it is what would be expected from a government that knows that a response from the PNP Opposition will create problems from that party, especially when the PNP has not completed any real work since 2015 .

I glimpsed at a cartoon recently that had Omar Davies fittingly in the rear making criticism of Fayval Williams strutting ahead in fine form but not quite ‘running wid it’ in shameful, political form.

It seems to me that the most important concern that PM Holness could have at this time is the extent to which Donald Trump’s global misdirection on tariffs is likely to have negative impacts on all of the goodies in Fayval’s announcements.

We know now that it is unlikely that the JLP, through its core party machinery, will get any ‘blys’ from the GOP especially at a time when countries run by brown-skin people are non-existent to Trump and and his America-first, Christo-fascists.

As we gaze at the unboxing of America and the unleashing of the idiot class in governance, we are left to wonder how much lower can his enablers in Congress prostrate themselves before recovering a better part of themselves. If ever they did have it.

In Jamaica it would suit us to dwell for a moment on what we still have especially in light of the excess of speed America seems to be heading in tearing apart all of the democratic ideals we desperately try to cling to.

DANGEROUS ROADS

Could the poor state of Jamaican roads hand the opposition PNP the 2025 general elections? Of course there will be those who will place votes of annoyance in favour of the PNP. But there will be also those who may say that bad roads are like prostitution, being around since the ancient times of the old, worn PNP and it only made hurtful promises.

The big problem facing the JLP is that as the roads remain unrepaired, it will take less and less rain to do the same amount of additional damage. PM Holness and his team should, therefore, consider that it may have to call the elections with our roads in an ‘as is, where is’ condition and bank hard on the country’s structural strength and the fiscal soundness of the economy.

And with all of the stuffings in the JLP’s goody bag, it is still going to be hard to resist a spending road package as both parties rush to make their final cases to the electorate.

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