The ghost of Hitler walked in Gordon Town in 1980...and again in 2011

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Mr Damion O Crawford, the People's National Party (PNP) candidate for the East Rural St Andrew constituency was set last night to reopen a nasty 21-year-old wound in the square of Gordon Town.

Mr Crawford announced that the PNP organisation in the constituency would be holding a Memorial Service for the late Mr Roy McGann, the PNP candidate who was killed on the eve of Nomination Day for the general election held on October 30, 1980.

"The event will take the form of a candle light ceremony with drumming," he tells us, as if to befuddle and fool us into thinking that there is something worthy of this so-called memorial service.

Mr Crawford must know that this is a crude way of trying to gain whatever political mileage he misleads himself into thinking he can get from reviving what was a bitter episode in the political life of Jamaica. It is disrespectful of Mr McGann's memory and insensitive as regards his surviving loved ones.

Mr McGann was killed, reportedly by the police, in an incident in Gordon Town square, forcing the PNP to bring in an emergency candidate who eventually lost to Mrs Joan Gordon Webley - the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate Mr Crawford is facing in the December 29, 2011 elections.

Mr McGann's death came close to the end of Jamaica's most bloody and bruising election campaign in which police reported an estimated 800 people killed. It was a shameful blot on the image of our country.

In describing the incident at Mr McGann's funeral service, Anglican priest, the Rev Ernle Gordon said in cryptic language: "The ghost of Hitler walked in Gordon Town."

The real question is why has Mr Crawford decided to bring back Mr McGann from the dead, so to speak? What good can come of this? He can't even argue that this December is an anniversary of the incident. Remember the election was in October 1980 and the Nomination Day was before that.

While no foreseeable good can come of it, we fear it will reopen a wound which we hope would have long healed. In fact, many of the young voters, we are sure, would not even have known of this incident and probably don't know who Mr McGann was. What would a young man like Mr Crawford have known of the incident beyond what he might have subsequently heard or read? It does seem that he is appealing to the older ones who would have been around at the time.

Mr Crawford is a young man, but as we often see, some of our young politicians are carbon copies of the older politicians who know no other way to operate their politics than to encourage deep divisions among the people, by whatever means necessary.

Indeed, the ghost of Hitler walked again last night in Gordon Town square.

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The ghost of Hitler walked in Gordon Town in 1980...and again in 2011