News

The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) crowned Bruce Golding as the leader of the opposition party last week.

Speaking after his appointment at the party conference, Mr. Golding said: “I have become the guardian of a great heritage (and) I accept this responsibility with humility, knowing that I can’t do it alone.

“We must work together and we must reach out and join hands with Jamaicans of goodwill everywhere who want to see a country in which it is righteousness, not power, that exalts the nation,” he said in front of hundreds of jubilant party supporters who crammed into the National Arena to witness the historic occasion.

“I call on all of you to let this day be the beginning of a new day for Jamaica,” he added.

Golding hit out at the present government for presiding over a country where, he said, crime was rampant, economic growth slow, and unemployment at an unacceptably high level.

His vision for Jamaica was one in which “some people may be rich, but no one will have to be poor.”

He also said that the country has been burdened for the last 16 years with a government that has failed the people.

He pointed out that the present government has paid nearly $500bn in interest to service debt but failed to match the level of growth which other developed countries were able to achieve during the 1990s.

The present government has only been able to create 80,000 jobs in 16 years, he added.

Explaining the JLP’s position on the impending Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Mr. Golding said that the party was not opposed to the court, but the principle on which it was being established. The JLP believed that there were not enough measures in place to isolate the court from political influence.

Golding left the JLP in 1995 and returned to it just before the 2002 elections.

Golding’s predecessor Edward Seaga retired as head of the party in January.

Published: 28 February 2005
Issue: 1155