WHEN a political party becomes the joke of every gathering and the butt of every joke one would believe that is the best time to pack it in and just make the best of the moment. Just walk away and disappear into the sunset.

Well, it appears that the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party has no intention of doing so.

Among JLP benches are flip-floppers, one of whom is the power Karl Samuda, who has won elections on both party tickets and who probably knows politics better than anyone at any university can teach and distil.

I don’t particularly like Karl Samuda, and I suspect he feels the same way about me, but whenever we meet each other at social functions, we smile at each other and shake hands. We are doing it because it is better than wringing each other’s necks.

Samuda was the biggest backer of Andrew Holness in the JLP’s internal election which had Audley Shaw as the challenger.

Shaw lost and the JLP has been in turmoil.

Andrew Holness is said not to be a man whom forgives those who gave him the pain of his recent past. Somehow that doesn’t quite square with the man who I have met at Sabina Park in exclusive boxes when we exchange pleasantries with each other.

Samuda had this to say about him: “We are not politically or sufficiently ready,” in terms of the JLP under Andrew Holness’s leadership. And that was just a month ago, and then Samuda eventually flipped his flop and decided most recently that Holness was sweeter than freshly baked bread.

There is something radically wrong with the JLP that it cannot seem to get its act together when so many in the electorate are hurting and the leadership coming from the PNP Administration is so dismal.

Resignations, like those of Raymoth Notice and Paula Kerr-Jarrett, have not gone down very well in the public domain.

I spoke to someone deep inside the party who told me, “The Raymoth Notice thing is no big thing…As for Paula Kerr-Jarrett, she is genuinely involved in family business. which may help this country more than it can assist the party.”

I then said to him: “The ‘locals’ are coming. Can you guys realistically come face to face with the PNP and beat them?”

He responded: “It is going to be difficult. The PNP has made a promise to civil servants which they know they cannot honour. The IMF conditions have that written in stone. So what the PNP may do is try an early thing on us this year, because they know that by next year it will be too late. They may fail an IMF test and, in these times, that is a political bomb.”

I asked him: “Are you saying that the PNP is trying to trick the people?”

“We all do it. It is something called politics and power. We get it, and we latch onto it.”

I was a bit dismayed, even as I was no mere tyro.

I called one of my PNP friends, a man deep inside the party. “Mark, there is no way that we are going to lose the next elections. I have JLP friends, as you know, and they know it too. When I get a contract, I give nuff ah dem people work. In a way, it probably suit dem fi mek we gwaan run the government.”

I laughed, and he asked me over the phone why I was doing so.

“Mark there is no…way that the JLP will win the next elections. Inside the party we have Andrew Holness as a joking matter. Wi have him as a boy. Wi have him ticket. Wi have the JLP so stuffed up with themselves that they cannot even get themselves out of dem stuffing.”

Then he added: “The money boys who back and fund politics are with us. They see us as the best bet. Why yuh want go somewhey else?”

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