Jamaicans will go to the polls on December 29^th 2011.

December 29^th is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for me as that is the date of my birth. I have a prob­lem with Prime Minister Holness call­ing elec­tions on my birth­day, I’m not hap­py about that kind of mad­ness on my spe­cial day. Ok that was a joke, but seri­ous­ly though over the years I have added my voice in the call for fixed elec­tion dates. It seem juve­nile and almost child­ish for some­thing as seri­ous and Jermain to our coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty as elec­tions to be left to the whim and fan­cy of one per­son. I am yet to hear a rea­son­able argu­ment that sup­ports the sta­tus quo.Conversely it has been a tool for Prime Ministers to use when it suits them , and at a time when the polls are in their favor.

In the greater scheme of things it real­ly is not as seri­ous as some who argue against it would have you believe, at least in my mind , and I would be open to hear­ing and assim­i­lat­ing more argu­ments in sup­port of our posi­tion. It is impor­tant but for me it does not par­al­lel the need for con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and a com­plete de-annex­a­tion from Britain. I do believe a date cer­tain would be more ben­e­fi­cial to the finan­cial mar­kets and the busi­ness sec­tor, nei­ther of which par­tic­u­lar­ly likes dis­qui­et or uncer­tain­ty. It seem to me it would also cause those han­dling the peo­ple’s busi­ness to bring greater stew­ard­ship and pro­fes­sion­al­ism to their jobs, unless of course they choose to com­mit polit­i­cal suicide.

One thing is cer­tain as a specie we con­tin­ue to give up free­doms that made our lives fun and inter­est­ing, the lat­i­tude a prime Minister has in call­ing elec­tions with­in a cer­tain time but not a spe­cif­ic date will prob­a­bly be tak­en away because of the games­man­ship that has become syn­ony­mous with that lat­i­tude. Simple lux­u­ries like hav­ing a cell phone in one’s car has been abused by those who talk and text while they dri­ve , has attract­ed sig­nif­i­cant penal­ties to those conveniences.

So as we pay a price for talking/​texting while dri­ving, our Prime Ministers may very soon lose the lat­i­tude of being the decider of when elec­tions are called.