How Does The JLP Overcome The Deficit .….….…..

ELECTIONS IN JAMAICA

Elections in Jamaica Generally seem to reflect the will of the peo­ple, if of course you are will­ing to over­look the val­ue of the Island’s Garrison. To those un-famil­iar with the term, it is the prac­tice of the polit­i­cal par­ty in pow­er to unfair­ly use scare pub­lic funds to ben­e­fit vot­ers loy­al to that par­ty. This usu­al­ly means lump­ing acqui­es­cent vot­ers into con­stituen­cies which gen­er­al­ly vote for that party .
In essence what they end up doing is to cre­ate super con­stituen­cies which the oppo­si­tion par­ty has no chance of win­ning. Free Housing and oth­er largess cre­ates a class of vot­ers who become rub­ber stamps for the par­ty, regard­less of whether it has a dis­mal record of achieve­ment or per­for­mance for the coun­try as a whole.
In the United States this is done under the name “Gerrymandering”. This is done through an act of Congress how­ev­er achiev­ing the same dubi­ous results .
The Party with the major­i­ty in the House is allowed to re-draw Congressional dis­trict lines in a way which defies any log­ic but that par­ty’s rapa­cious desire to lump blocks of vot­ers into a sin­gle dis­trict loy­al to the par­ty doing the re-drawing.

All in all our coun­try remains some­what a vibrant Democracy sup­port­ed by both polit­i­cal par­ties and a peo­ple who are fierce­ly loy­al to demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and ideals.
Our coun­try is still looked at as a mod­el for bud­ding democracies .
For that our peo­ple can be proud . No, we have not estab­lished the eco­nom­ic frame­work for suc­cess Indonesia or Malaysia has but nei­ther have we sur­ren­dered our rights and free­doms in pur­suit of eco­nom­ic viability.
Clearly a lot more needs to be done in terms of estab­lish­ing and rein­forc­ing an eco­nom­ic frame-work which will wean our coun­try from the dic­tates of par­a­sitic lend­ing agen­cies like the (IMF) which sucks the life-blood from our peo­ple leav­ing us far worse that when we were forced into the unholy alliance in the first place.

That will take time and a decid­ed focus . The ques­tion remains whether the peo­ple have the stom­ach for that change. Someone com­ment­ed to me recent­ly that the deficit is too great for the JLP to make up.
I thought about it long and hard tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the advan­tage the PNP has because of it’s gar­ri­son constituencies.
However this nev­er stopped Jamaicans before. Jamaicans have a his­to­ry of kick­ing out the bums of both par­ties en-mass when the pinch becomes unbear­able. The ques­tion is “is the pinch unbear­able”?

GETTING OUT MANUVERED

It’s easy to assume that Bruce Golding was forced to step down or that Andrew Holness and the JLP lost the elec­tions of 2011 because Golding refused to sur­ren­der Christopher(Duddus) Coke to the Americans.
It’s easy to assume Portia Simpson Miller made the list of Time Magazine’s list of most influ­en­tial women on merit.
It is easy to mis­un­der­stand the impact of out­side forces in shap­ing events in our country.
However if you are will­ing to look at trends which the Government was inca­pable of under­stand­ing when it decid­ed to hedge oil prices at US$66 per bar­rel, you’ll find out just how events begin.
Bruce Golding’s demise begun when he remarked to a British Journalist that there would be no “Gays in his cab­i­net”.
If you under­stand the pow­er of out­side agen­cies then you begin under­stand­ing what was behind the demand that Coke to be extra­dit­ed to face charges in the United States, and the ensu­ing con­se­quences of that demand.
It was lose, lose for Golding, if he acqui­esced and allowed the process to play out in the Courts as many have said he should, his base of sup­port in Tivoli Gardens evap­o­rate. Golding was a trans­plant into Tivoli, he did not have the con­trol Edward Seaga built for him­self over the decades.
Conversely if Golding fought the Americans, regard­less of the argu­ment he used he would be seen as sup­port­ing a crim­i­nal want­ed by a pow­er­ful ally.
Bruce Golding was done as Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Was it acci­den­tal that the very same ques­tion was posed to Simpson Miller dur­ing the debates between her­self and Holness dur­ing the 2011 elec­tion cycle?
Does any ratio­nal thinker believe Portia Simpson Miller stat­ed she would sup­port revis­it­ing the Bugger Act on her own voli­tion ?
Once you begin to pon­der all this then you begin to see the pieces fall into place. You start under­stand­ing why the tired, out of ideas PNP was returned to pow­er much to their own astonishment.
Then you see why Portia was reward­ed by Time Magazine.
Then you under­stand the Obama visit.

GANJA
HOW QUICKLY SHOULD JAMAICA LEGALIZE GANJA ?

I have sug­gest­ed that the JLP fig­ure out the trends and stake out a pop­ulist posi­tion on emerg­ing trends before the peo­ple them­selves estab­lish a position.
There is hard­ly an issue more impor­tant to Jamaicans than “Marijuana”.
Even with­out the Rastafarian posi­tion on the weed as a reli­gious sacra­ment ‚Jamaicans are heavy users of mar­i­jua­na which we com­mon­ly know as Ganja.
Many Jamaicans smoke the weed , many use it to make a type of tea which they believe havemed­i­c­i­nal val­ue to them.
Not to men­tion the way Ganja is seen as a poten­tial eco­nom­ic sav­ior for many.
On that basis it makes smart polit­i­cal sense to stake out a posi­tion which is in line with the think­ing of the people.
THE TRUTH ABOUT GANGA COMING OUT.

Last Sunday a mul­ti­tude gath­ered in Half-Way-Tree square, the air was filled with the putrid stench of cannabis . Above the sea of heads was a sol­id cloud of gan­ja smoke.
It was a gan­ja smok­ers heaven.
It was in that atmos­phere that the Island’s Prime Minister mount­ed the stage and gloat­ed about less gan­ja arrests to roar­ing ovation.
Long before all this hap­pened how­ev­er, this medi­um and this hum­ble writer begged the JLP to get out in front of this issue.
Set this hum­ble blog­ger and medi­um aside, there were indi­ca­tors aplenty.
It was­n’t too long ago that the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty sug­gest­ed to the police that they turn a blind eye to peo­ple smok­ing the weed.
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Under no cir­cum­stances should the JLP have been out­ma­neu­vered on this issue.
Yet it was.
Does the JLP even under­stand­ing the val­ue of this issue to each par­ty going forward?
These are mon­u­men­tal issues which will influ­ence vot­ers going for­ward for decades. The JLP lit­er­al­ly sur­ren­dered to the nar­ra­tive that it is a rich man’s par­ty which is not true.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle it was Alexander Bustamante who spent almost two years locked up in prison for cham­pi­oning work­ers right, not Norman Manley.
Bustamante did not get out­ma­neu­vered by his cousin Norman Manley.
Bustamante a found­ing mem­ber of the People’s National Party PNP left and formed the JLP when the rhetoric and pol­i­cy posi­tions of the PNP became too rad­i­cal too unworkable.
The Jamaican peo­ple eschewed West Indies fed­er­a­tion Manley sup­port­ed, to which they were opposed and elect­ed Bustamante to Office.
Under Bustamante Jamaica became an inde­pen­dent nation August 1962. Alexander Bustamante became the first prime min­is­ter of the new­ly inde­pen­dent Jamaica.

Perceptions if left unchal­lenged becomes real­i­ty. To many Jamaicans that per­cep­tion is reality.
The JLP could least afford to have Jamaicans attribute the free­ing up of gan­ja as some­thing the PNP did .
Of course the par­ty was not in pow­er but there is much it could have done as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy-posi­tion which could have head­ed off and negat­ed that crit­i­cal perception.
It didn’t !!!