At Easter time many families come together, worship and take stock.
The family holds particular significance in societies that hold fast to morality, benevolence, kindness, education, traditions and the welfare of the collective.
Jamaica has a prime minister who is a contented family man, has an accomplished wife and two sons who have graduated fifth form. Under his tenure, we have watched the family prosper and the children come of age- doing well by doing good.
It gives Andrew Holness a certain degree of moral authority and sets him as an exemplar of living a wholesome life and taking care of your family.
A certain moral decay and turpitude does characterise Jamaican society which prizes “badmanship,” “hustling” and gal -in- a- bundle”.
Very little credence is given to ensuring that children have values that will serve the country and themselves well, that they are able to secure a good future, that wives and partners are honoured, that the family endures.
Andrew Holness is able to hold a mirror to Jamaica and can say ”Look, see what is possible. You too can have a lovely wife, nice kids and prosper in Jamaica.”
If Jamaicans can take care of their families then Jamaica will take care of them. True prosperity can be passed from one generation to another.
“The family represents the ultimate partnership and that is why my government will focus resources on supporting families,” Andrew Holness has said.
The Holness family differs from prime ministerial families of the last quarter of a century. It is the embodiment of the unitary family as we watch their journey of life continue to be a blessed one in real time.
Andrew Holness remains a popular prime minister and has presided over an even more triumphant JLP that has formed an unassailable government. His wife Juliet, an accomplished property developer, has joined her husband in Parliament and, but for familial connections, may very well be in the Cabinet. Their sons are doing well at school and will go on to university and laudable careers.
All this was not fortuitously obtained via sport or entertainment. They have formed a partnership underpinned by values that it is hoped the country can aspire to.
We did not see PJ Patterson as prime minister with a longstanding wife and young children. Portia Simpson Miller married late and did not have children. Bruce Golding’s kids were all grown up and he ascended to the office at 60, serving as prime minister for just four years.
Andrew Holness will be 50 this year and has already served for six and a half years as prime minister. He is viewed as a young but seasoned leader very much in touch with the younger generation. Both he and his wife are very much a team in the front seat of Jamaica’s development in the post-Independence/21st Century era, yet still subscribing to traditional family values.
Many have pointed a finger to the culture, the lack of family structure and values, a propensity for violence, men abandoning women-with-child, aberrant behaviour, lack of education, criminality, a neglect of socialisation. Some attribute all this for Jamaica’s woes and current predicament.
Holness can be considered as the right leader at the right time with the right bona fides to lead Jamaica out of the malaise into a bright future where citizens can see their lives progressing for the better and see the upward progress of their country.
As a successful family man, who better to get the buy-in and for Jamaicans to heed his call?
Andrew Holness has repeatedly declared: ”My dream for Jamaica is a place where people can choose to live, work, do business, raise their families and retire in paradise. It is a place that offers opportunity for self-fulfillment, certainly not the place you want to run away from.”
Now who wouldn’t want that for their family, indeed their country?
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