By H.G. Helps

Errald Miller will tell you, almost without blinking an eyelid, that he will continue to fiercely protect his wife, Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica’s seventh prime minister, whom he married 27 years ago in 1998.

Simpson Miller, a former president of the People’s National Party, was prime minister of Jamaica from February 2006 to September 2007 and later from December 2011 to April 2016. Amid speculation, reports suggested that dementia had set in since her retirement as opposition leader on December 4, 2016, and as a member of the Jamaican Parliament in June 2017, when she began to live a low-key life.

Errald Miller came on the record, as he put it, for the “first time” that she had been battling the brain disorder, and defended his stance that she ought to be protected, so that she could avoid manipulation.

“That’s my life (protecting her). I live for nothing else but her at this time. I have had a lot of opportunities, but I have dropped all of those things to focus on her,” Miller told two senior journalists in an interview, right after he had received the Medal of Friendship from the Government of the Republic of Cuba during a ceremony held at the Cuban Embassy in New Kingston, on Wednesday (September 17).

“It’s the first time I am going to say this to anybody … she has been going through dementia, but she hasn’t reached the big stages yet – physically she is fine, so she still eats, drinks, sleeps, walks, and talks to us who are around her. So, like how she knows you, she would probably stare at you, and then once you get the hug and the kiss, we know that she recognises you,” Miller said.

He described Jamaica’s first woman prime minister as “fun to be with” for the three other people who occupy their St Andrew house with her.

“We enjoy her,” Miller said. “There is somebody from politics who has always been her friend and has never let her down, who is there most Sundays and sometimes goes with her to the hairdresser. She goes to hairdresser every third Wednesday, so she still does those things.

“I know they say that I blocked Portia (from the public), but I don’t block Portia; people come and look for her same way. My only requirement during COVID-19 was if you don’t believe in COVID-19, don’t come and look for her, because I saw the kind of response to COVID-19, and it had nothing to do with what the papers said. It was rough, and I never wanted her to go through that. 

“I was probably the first person in the house (to get vaccinated) … I went to the [United] States and got vaccinated, and then by the time I came back, a few weeks after they were ready to do hers. So that was one of the requirements I had. 

“The second requirement was that I didn’t allow photographs, because a lot of people will say nice words about her, but they still want to pull her down, and I not allowing it (sic). So, people who are coming for photo ops, it doesn’t make sense they come because I am not going to allow it,” stated Miller, a former president of telecommunications giant Cable and Wireless Ltd.

He said that one of the frequently asked questions by medical personnel was if she walks, sleeps, eats, drinks, among others, but the only change that he and her other caregivers had seen over the last two years is that she does not talk much on the telephone.

“Although I was away the other day, she was responding (while they were on a phone call). I would be lying if I said you were getting a long sentence, but (like I would say), ‘How are you?’, ‘Is that you?’, and she would say) ‘Yes’,” Miller continued.

“Now and then she would do a sentence, but it would be like repeating a sentence that you gave her. Some of the things I see on the news, like documentaries and so on, that’s not her. She hasn’t reached that stage.

“I say to anybody who is going through these things, this is a hypothesis that I have … I find that love is most important. She gets a lot of love from the people who are around her, and I find it holds the disease from increasing. 

“We have been doing that, and we find that we are able to hold it, and one of the only major changes that she has over the past two years is that she doesn’t pick up the phone and talk, but if you put it to her ears, she will communicate with the person, especially if it is one of us. But she is alright and she is in good hands,” said Miller, who underscored that members of the household were “there with her”.

Miller said that his wife is still recognised “every December 12” on her birthday, and he buys her favourite lychee cake and ice cream for her to enjoy on the day.

Up to the time of her retirement from elective politics, Simpson Miller had served the people of St Andrew South Western from 1976 to 1983, and again from 1989 to 2017 – a total of 35 years. From 1983 to 1989, the PNP was not represented in the Parliament of the land, as it boycotted the 1983 snap election called by then Prime Minister Edward Seaga.

Then president of the PNP and Opposition Leader Michael Manley said the party that he led boycotted the election, as he claimed that the voters’ list was flawed.

Simpson Miller, a native of Wood Hall in St Catherine, also served the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, now Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, as a councillor.