Alexander Brucetamante?

He is given credit for starting the movement which changed the society and became a father of the nation. This man took a principled position which many saw as not benefiting him personally. He bared his chest defiantly, staking his political future, if not his life, on his bravery. Later, the administration locked him up for two years because he dared to make anti-colonial comments. Even without the benefit of WikiLeaks, it was a case of cock mouth kill cock.

After a bit of sleight of hand, he hoodwinked his opponent into calling an election at a time when he wanted, as opposed to when it suited his adversary, and became the first prime minister of independent Jamaica. Despite ill-advised concessions in the bauxite deals with the multinationals gaining inordinate control over our resources and limited gains for workers, who had propelled him into power, William Alexander Clarke, the mythological Alexander Bustamante, is canonised in the annals of our history as a hero.

Heroes are about who is writing and who has control over the machinery of ideology at the time. In simple language, history is written by the powerful. It was Latino writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who said, "Let us hurry to write our history before the historians arrive." A similar Kenyan proverb declares, "Until the lions have their own historians, the tale of the hunt will favour the hunter."

Fast-forward to 2000 something AD when all who are reading this are nothing more than a pile of decayed bones and the school-children are researching Orette Bruce Golding, MP. By then, Dudus would have settled and Golding would have been recorded as the prime minister who 'belled' the cat, a nefarious gangster who came to prominence between the early 1990s and 2000s when Golding was either in Opposition or out of Parliament, and was ousted and extradited three years after he became prime minister. His-story might very well make Golding the hero for facing down criminals and in the wake of the departure of Christopher Coke, violent crime, which peaked under a People's National Party (PNP) Government in 2006, and dipped quicker than his credibility in 2010.

What of Tivoli dead?

And what of the 73 'martyrs' in Tivoli, who some residents claim were the victims of the indiscretionary and reckless violence of the armed forces? Which version of history will be written? Well, it was a military-police operation, and official reports, the only recorded accounts so far, clearly state that they were enemy troops or militiamen, fighting to protect Coke and his lawless empire.

Even when we look at the saga involving the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) acting improperly on behalf of the Government and engaging Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, what do we have? A prime minister who apologised to the nation, bowed to pressure to stay in office although he explicitly said that he had offered his resignation, and a year later, finally relented to his conscience. The scribes will record that the 'Driva' did the proper thing and appointed a commission of enquiry to investigate, among other things, his own possible wrongdoings. Unlike his 'frenemy' Harold Brady, who was the agent of the JLP/Government and who could have answered all the questions definitively, Golding appeared before the commission, gave testimony and suffered the humiliation of an angry, miserable cross examination.

Long after he is typified as 'pathologically mendacious' by the ultra witty and brilliant PNP jurist, K.D. Knight, unless there is a book that has it immortalised, the memory of that comment would fade and the newspaper pages will have long wrapped pungent formaldehyde-soaked fish, absorbed flood waters and made a workable substitute for bathroom tissue. All that will be in the Golding Chronicles will be the report of the commissioners. No one was guilty of any major offence.

Strange as it might sound, I bet hardly anyone knows that Bustamante would have benefited from being seen as a Spanish white man in the 1920s and '30s if he had a Spanish name instead of a mulatto one. How well-known is it that Bustamante was not a practising trade unionist, nor was he a labour leader when the uprisings in 1938 occurred? In fact, he was an officer of the Jamaica Workmen and Tradesmen Union in 1937 but was ousted by its founders A.G.S. Coombs and H.C. Buchanan, who had founded it in 1935. It is perhaps unknown to many that Bustamante offered his services as a mediator to the employers and Government and was rejected. And, after approaching the striking workers to speak to them, he was initially rebuffed with more force than a mendicant finance minister approaching the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Take my word: It was St Willliam Grant, whose contribution as labour leader is conveniently 'parked' at Bustamante's feet, who told the masses that a repulsion of Busta meant a concomitant rejection of him. Busta did not start any labour uprising.

Resisting police

Like Bustamante, Golding left while still having more time left in his term. Busta, like Bruce, is a co-founder of a political party. The difference is that Busta was a PNP man who went to set up the JLP in 1943, while Golding is a two-time Labourite who left, was out in the blue, but returned to greener pastures.

Does anyone recall when an attempt was made by the police and military to enter Tivoli in pursuit of criminals in 2005? And where was Bruce? He stood and faced down the security forces in a fashion reminiscent of the 1938 strikes. Only recently imposed on the workers by Grant, Bustamante told the police "shoot me, but leave them alone!" Yeah, right, black policemen shooting a deputy-white elite in Jamaica in the 1930s? Not even today in 21st-century Jamrock would Offica Dibble point anything beyond his index finger at a 'brung man', much less then. Bruce read his history and he knows the legend of 'Alexander the Great'.

After becoming leader of an Edward Seaga-less JLP, he egged and taunted Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to call elections. Paying more attention to him than the polls, she waited until it was Bruce time and called it too late and the rest is ... his-story! Busta pushed his cousin to do the same, and instead of paying attention to the streets, Norman Manley kept his eyes on Busta. And in 1961, Manley, who had done all the work to secure our Independence, had to walk away a broken man as Bustamante sucked up the cake like the fat child at a birthday party. Round one, Bruce.

So, where will Bruce Golding's legacy be written? If by stepping down and letting Andrew Holness lead the JLP to victory, beating an undefeatable Portia Simpson-led PNP, what will he be seen as? He would have done what only Bustamante alone ever did - give the JLP two consecutive (contested) victories over the PNP. Bruce might be loose, but he is no fool.