Smokescreen
Gender activist upset over Wright’s return to JLP; Opposition warns of ‘dangerous lesson’ being taught
Published:Wednesday | February 19, 2025 | 12:08 AMLivern Barrett/Senior Staff Reporter
The return of Westmoreland Central Member of Parliament (MP) to the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has set off a firestorm of criticisms, with one advocate suggesting that the separation “really was a farce from the beginning”.
Judith Wedderburn, a gender activist and development advocate in Jamaica and the Caribbean, argued that “in a way, to me, that whole conversation and the final decision that was made really is an insult to the public – the women and men who are concerned about domestic violence”.
“It was very duplicitous. They literally tapped him on his wrist and said, ‘It’s okay’. That’s disappointing,” Wedderburn said in an interview yesterday.
There was no response to the criticisms from the JLP up to late yesterday.
However, the party’s young professionals affiliate Generation 2000 (G2K) pushed back at criticisms, pointing to the opening of shelters for domestic violence victims, the passage of the Sexual Harassment Act and the strengthening of the Domestic Violence Act as evidence that the Government is committed to protecting women from gender-based violence.
Wright walked away from the JLP in 2021 amid public outrage over a viral video of a man beating a woman, first with his fist then with a stool.
The first-term MP has never publicly denied being the person in the video.
No criminal charges were filed against him by the police, though, at the time of the incident, Wright and his then common-law spouse filed separate complaints at two different police stations.
The case was closed after the two, who are now married, did not pursue the complaints.
While on the opposition benches in Gordon House, he told The Gleaner that he still supported the Holness administration and its policies.
The JLP confirmed Wright’s return last weekend, pointing to the “mitigating” actions he has taken since stepping away.
‘A BIG LIE’
But for the country’s main parliamentary opposition, public utterances that Wright had stepped away was a “JLP deception” and a “big lie”.
“The JLP didn’t truly dismiss George Wright. They distanced themselves just long enough to weather the storm, only to now welcome him back as though he was been washed whiter than snow,” said Nekeisha Burchell, deputy general secretary of the People’s National Party (PNP).
Opposition Senator Gabriela Morris charged that the ruling party has set a “dangerous precedent” and taught a “damaging lesson that power can silence accountability”.
“It was a display of power over principle, of politics over morality and of silence over accountability,” she said during a press conference by the PNP yesterday.
But G2K, in a public statement yesterday, cited allegations of physical violence made against senior members of the PNP.
The JLP young professionals affiliate condemned what it called the “opportunistic display” by the women in the PNP, who it accused of preying on the emotions of Jamaicans while “betraying their inconsistency and hypocrisy”.
“Generation 2000 believes that issues of gender-based violence and rehabilitation are far too serious to be addressed in the tribal, politically opportunistic and hypocritical manner in which the women from the PNP approached these issues,” said the statement.