The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Fred Mitchell’s “Air Force One” crash-landed in Fox Hill on election night. Neither Captain Freddie nor the wreckage of his gargantuan arrogance and self-importance could initially be found. The search party hoped to spot him at the recount the next day but His Highness was a no show.

Four days later, we learned that he was sulking in an undisclosed location, blaming everyone but himself and the PLP for the crash.

If you ever harboured doubt that Mitchell was delusional, you got the proof in his own words. In Fred’s mind it was not the people-powered FNM “salami” that had sliced and diced the PLP. It was rich white foreigners and their Uncle Tom cronies who hoodwinked the electorate. Only the electorate is too stupid to know it.

Presumably, to our former top diplomat there is a difference between objective reality and fact. Not since the era of Donald Trump in the White House in the USA has there been such huge delusion.

The fact to the rest of world is that the FNM won the election by a landslide. To Fred the “objective reality” is that it was just a passing phase that will last five years. He obviously meant “subjective reality”. The objective deals with the tangible reality you can touch and feel. The subjective deals with the reality you create in your mind.

The “fact” that he lost his seat convincingly to a political neophyte, the second woman to beat him including Juanianne Dorsette in 1997, has no bearing on Fred’s reality.

“Keep moving,” he tells the throngs of FNM voters. Nothing to see here. Except there is a lot of PLP wreckage, including the supreme leader who was utterly humiliated in Centreville.

The heartache Perry Christie must be feeling these days is not the pain of rejection, it is just the objective reality telling him that the motorcycle outriders, the soft leather seats of the Prime Ministerial car and the fluttering flag on the hood, don’t belong to him anymore. The people dem gone take back dey tings and give it to somebody else.

That Fred would have the unmitigated gall to talk about foreign involvement in this election when the objective reality of just five years ago was we had Peter Nygard talking about how he had paid to “take-back our country”. Mere weeks ago the objective reality exposed Jerome “Throw me out $20,000” Fitzgerald begging a white foreigner for contracts and Shane “Hurricane” Gibson on a monthly retainer from Mr. Nygard.

The PLP failed to correct the problem, says Fred. More like failed to acknowledge that there was a problem. Where was Sir Freddie when all and sundry were piling on to plunder the Treasury? Unless he can prove that he did so on his own dime, then jetting off to Los Angeles in first class to sing “happy birthday” to Sir Sidney Poitier was also an attack on the treasury.

Quoting the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, further exemplifies his delusion. Manley knew about being routed in an election. The son of the founder of his People’s National Party, Manley stubbornly led them to a crushing defeat in 1980 winning just nine of the 60 seats in the House.

Did he learn from that rout? Two years later with his party’s popularity rebounding he refused to take part in snap elections and so all 60 seats in parliament were in the hands of the Jamaica Labour Party.

The “objective difference” between Manley in 1980 and Fred now, was that Manley didn’t lose his seat in the rout to which Fred refers. He was around for the reconstruction. His constituents didn’t kick him to the curb or in Fred’s case the apt metaphor would be that he was drowned in the new Fox Hill swimming pool.

No one should now doubt that there is some self-serving motive behind Fred’s private citizen morse code to the evolving power structure in the PLP. If he were indeed on the inside he never would have made his thoughts public.

He is as much a stranger to the soon to be reformed PLP as he surely will be the next time he enters the precincts of the House of Assembly. Ms. Shonel Ferguson will be the honourable member for Fox Hill, and Fred can put that in his tea.

The Governor General will invite Philip Brave Davis, Glenys Hanna-Martin, Picewell Forbes or Chester Cooper to lead Her Majesty’s loyal opposition in the House of Assembly. Of course it is of no concern of the Queen’s Representative who leads the PLP.

It is the leader of the opposition alone who will decide who will be the PLP senators. Many believe that Fred wants to be one of them and so he has surfaced to try and weasel a Senate appointment.

As if anybody cared, Fred says that the PLP needs professional help to rebuild. He was channeling to Brave that he mustn’t appoint amateurs to the Senate. Stick with the professional pit bulls.

With Perry now reviewing retirement home brochures, Brave can finally break free and be his own man. Does he go with new faces or does he bring back the tired old crew that voters rejected?

It is no great secret that few in the PLP have any special fondness for Fred and so his call to arms to his fellow vanquished colleagues will likely fall flat.

In Fred’s mind it’ll always be May 9. Because that way election day never happened.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

May 16, 2017.