Dear Editor,

Around 1996 Bruce Golding told hundreds of us NDM members at the Jamaica Conference Centre: “I wish that God had spoken to PJ Patterson and Edward Seaga the way he spoke to me.” He was saying that it was necessary to travel in a new direction away from tribalism, away from garrisonisation, away from crime.

To put a generous interpretation on events, Mr Golding must have seen his God-given vision as capable of fulfilment if he moved into the power vacuum of the JLP and led from the top.

Well, now that he is at the top he has to stay the course and fulfil that vision by facing the Christopher Coke issue squarely. It will be at the risk of his life and the lives of those of us who want these fundamental changes. His days of waffling and our days of waffling are over.

The alternatives, for example, some other JLP prime minister, a PNP administration, an NDM-suggested talking shop called a “Government of national unity” will not solve anything – none of them.

It is going to take gallons and gallons of innocent blood (as typified by Ted Ogilvie’s sacrificial refusal to stop investigating the McGregor Gully project) to undo what we have allowed to fester for decades under the slogan, “Jamaica no Problem”.

If we don’t act now, it’s Zimbabwe here we come!

Michael H Elliott

Mango Valley

St Mary