Mr. Vegas has called Mark Golding “the modern day King Saul.” That line comes near the end of a long open letter the dancehall veteran posted to Facebook, and it’s far from the only shot he takes at the leader of the People’s National Party.
The post opens by branding Golding “an exploiter of weakness, vulnerability, ignorance, gullible minds!”
From there, it reads less like a celebrity rant and more like a prosecutor’s opening statement, stacking up grievances one after another.
Coopers Pen is the first stop. Vegas asks why Golding, whom he describes as “a big lawyer and justice minister” at the time, stayed quiet when, in Vegas’s telling, the PNP “tricked the Coopers Pen squatters into believing that they were going to get the land.
He then turns to the Mona Common squatters and asks whether Golding cared about the poor when he protested against them.
I think I know why you have found Jesus and is now ready to take care of the poor, right?” Vegas writes, before offering his own answer: Golding wants to become Prime Minister “by any means necessary.”
The middle of the letter is a rapid-fire list of claims Vegas says Golding is selling to the “weakest in society.”
They range from housing and Hurricane Melissa relief to the allegation that Prime Minister Andrew Holness has 28 bank accounts and is “therefore” a criminal.
Vegas also brings up the PNP’s Melissa relief collection, which he puts at “3 million JAMAICAN DOLLARS,” and what he calls WhatsApp voice notes about PNP plans “to sabotage NaRRA and drag General Anderson’s name into corruption.” He even takes a jab at Golding’s UK citizenship, mocking the idea that he “had to get a UK visa.”
The one spot where Vegas slows down is housing. He argues that the social housing program is different from the indigent housing program, suggesting Golding is blurring the two to convince people they can’t own the homes the government is giving away.
That’s where the letter splits into two very different documents. One is a policy argument about how post-Melissa housing support works, something readers can actually check. The other is pure personal attack, capped off with “God does not like you!”
What the post doesn’t contain is any response from Golding. Many of the accusations are Vegas’s own characterizations of what he believes Golding has said or done, and the letter doesn’t spell out where or when those statements were made.
That gap matters, because readers will come to this from opposite directions. Supporters of the government will likely read it as a famous voice saying what they’ve been thinking.
Others will see an artist piling into a political fight with a list of allegations and very little sourcing.
Either way, this isn’t a subtle intervention from one of dancehall’s most recognizable names. “The critical minds are watching your devious nature play out in real time!” Vegas writes, signing off with a dare: “Keep going!”
Whether Golding or the PNP bothers to answer is the next thing to watch.
