For countless years, Jamaica has benefitted from the brand that is Usain Bolt.

That situation continues to this very day. Bolt has brought more joy in sport to Jamaica than any other individual. Some would even say that his overall performance on the international athletics stage has reaped more joy for this island than all others combined. Of course, that remains debatable.

What is without doubt though, is what Bolt has been able to do in his role as unofficial nation builder in chief. That’s why it is so hard to fathom how he has been treated by the Government of Jamaica in the saga that has engulfed the local financial scene like a California wildfire.

The stealing of Bolt’s over US$12 million in the failed Stocks and Securities establishment is sad, wicked, and downright unacceptable. Bolt has been made several promises and has been offered words to soothe him, but it is time for action, and it does not appear that the Government really understands that the time has come for the slackness that has forced the world’s greatest athlete of all time into bouts of deep stress, to end.

When I worked on KLAS Radio well over two decades ago, I had the opportunity, along with Maurice Foster, to interview a shy Usain Bolt about his athletics, school work and other matters. At the end of that discourse, Pat Anderson, who served as President of the then Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association, told me that it was the first radio interview that Bolt had done, and he liked the way he handled himself and thought that if he continued in that manner, it would only serve to build his confidence on the track.

Many years later, Bolt got to a stage where expressing himself was no bugbear, although he has always refrained from getting into tricky verbal situations that would lead to controversy, considering who he is. But now we see that he is making a jump start, finally, in getting the word out that he is not pleased with how matters surrounding his finances have been handled by those he trusted.

I know for sure that many of the world’s leading media organisations, among them CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera, have been working overtime to get a blockbuster interview with the 38-year-old. A few of them have contacted me in a bid to get through to the sprint star, but, alas, I don’t enjoy that privilege of 20-odd years ago.

What I see happening now, is an episode of pointing that destructive finger of blame by political diehards, and a few media personnel at Bolt and his inner circle, about the possibility of mismanagement on their part, which is a clear case of hogwash.

Instead of this man being treated like the national hero that he is, and the agonising delay in officially recognising him as such, is quite uncomfortable. He is being made to feel as if he should have switched allegiance to a foreign land long ago.

It is public knowledge that Prime Minister Andrew Holness, a one-time investor in Stocks and Securities, was advised to take his money out of the institution because it was on shaky ground. Why could someone in the know not have given Bolt a ‘prip’ that he should have run the fastest race of his life and get his dough out too? 

Of course, only one individual has been charged in the false start race of taking off with Bolt’s money, and that of other people now suffering. How strange! Jean Ann Panton could not have done it alone.

There is also an individual, of oriental background, who has been burnt worse than Bolt, but he seems inclined to watch how the proceedings unfold. Maybe, money-wise, he can afford to do so, but the entire mess ought not to have happened.

The time has come for transparent action, and the slop that saw the initial intervention by then finance minister Nigel Clarke, needs to be mopped up now. The nation must be told about a certain report that was done recently.   

Two years have elapsed. Bolt should get his money back. He thoroughly and truly deserves it.

That boring Throne Speech

What’s new in Gordon House, seat of the Jamaican Parliament?

Nothing.

Well, a change of characters this time during the annual Throne Speech, from the one that we have grown accustomed to for over 15 years to a veteran newcomer if you understand that contradiction.

Sometimes I wonder if members of Jamaica’s House of Representatives and the Senate set out to provide work for medical practitioners who are qualified to mend hands and wrists whenever they go bad. For the regular pounding of desks, many times when only mere promises are made regarding how money will be spent for the next fiscal year must cause those putting pressure on their hands to seek medical advice after…Those who are not so young, in particular.

So when Custos of Kingston Steadman Fuller, acting for Governor-General Sir Patrick, armed with a fancy teleprompter, was charged to regurgitate the same rhetoric of yesteryear, there began the epistle taken from the gospel of boredom.

You could predict some of what would be said, and how the woodwork would suffer from those pounding hands. You would even wonder if the veteran custos had said, inadvertently, that $4.2 billion had been set aside to improve the lives of a colony of ants as a backup to feed the nation if there was a shortage of food, that that too would have been met with much applause.

Jamaica is at a stage at which a Throne Speech is absolutely unnecessary. Plus, that speech is usually read by people who do not fully understand how things will work. It remains a part of the symbol of neo-colonialism that this country should be moving to get rid of, instead of continuing with it.

Even if the Throne Speech has to be kept, it should be made sexier, and presented by someone who people will stop and watch, not by grumpy old men who only serve as turnoffs. I thought that, maybe, the officials could allow Spice to present it, once in a while, but then she would have to go back to school. So, the obvious pick would be Shenseea next time around, to jazz up things a bit. 

Let’s have a show of hands.

Is Delano Seiveright being choked?

The naming of three senators by the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) last week was a mixture of pleasant surprise and satisfaction.

Dr Elon Thompson, Marlon Morgan and Delano Seiveright were presented to the nation and from the look of things, few eyebrows were raised.

Dr Thompson, a champion urologist and former president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association, was, to some, a bit of a surprise, but how could it have been so, when he has had politics in his blood for years, what with his father, now deceased, at one time serving as deputy mayor of Montego Bay?

He is a decent human being and wants to see the best for his country, so it was a solid shot to the boundary by the prime minister, for him to have chosen Dr Thompson to sit in the Upper House.

Morgan’s selection could be seen as one that was always on the cards, through his stout, if not sometimes baseless defence of the administration of the day that oftentimes sees him coming across as too tribal. But it was Seiveright’s appointment that had me thinking.

It marked the second time that he had been offered the role of senator and having declined it the first time, I am left to wonder why he has accepted it this time, when from all indications,  seemed to be the frontrunner to take over from Karl Samuda in St Andrew North Central.

Does it mean now that Seiveright, a good Calabar man who I am informed will likely no longer be working with the Ministry of Tourism as its senior strategist and advisor, has been sidelined from further moving to becoming a Member of Parliament?

I am advised by those in the know at tourism, that he has been integral to the growth that tourism has been experiencing. So why stop that now?

Don’t be fooled by batting in regional cricket

The fact that 12 centuries were recorded in the first two rounds of the regional four-day cricket championship, is nothing to brag about. 

What would be interesting is to check the success rate of the bowlers…Better yet, to see how effective the bowlers have been.

Up to the time of writing, the number of centuries recorded heading toward the close of Round Three had moved to 16, which itself is a record after a similar number of rounds since properly structured regional cricket began with the Shell Shield in 1966. 

A lot of things have changed since the initial first-class match was played in 1865 between then-British Guiana and Barbados. Granted, for several years there were only five teams—Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, and the Combined Islands, before the latter split into the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands. 

The West Indies dominated world cricket between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s but has since lost its lustre. Now, led by president of Cricket West Indies, Dr Kishore Shallow—who cannot make his mind up about sticking with cricket administration or going into politics in his native St Vincent & the Grenadines—regional cricket has seen the centuries revolution of sorts as a reason administrators to feel comfortable. He need not be. 

From what I have been seeing, I could make a century against some of those bowlers, with or without the aid of glasses. That angle of the cricket needs to be checked out.