Elections Is JLP’s To Lose, A Win Would Remove The Monkey From Its Back…

Jamaicans go to the polls on Thursday morn­ing to choose the polit­i­cal par­ty that will lead the coun­try for the next five years.
Jamaica’s par­lia­men­tary sys­tem is close­ly sim­i­lar to its old colo­nial mas­ter’s sys­tem, vot­ers in des­ig­nat­ed con­stituen­cies chose a mem­ber of par­lia­ment from the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), the People’s National Party (PNP), or from the oth­er periph­er­al dis­or­ga­nized par­ties that say they are in the run­nings, none of which has been able to secure a seat in the nation’s 63 seat legislature.
Depending on the par­ty that wins the most seats in the leg­is­la­ture, that par­ty is asked by the (Governor-General) the Queen’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to form the next Government.
Don’t look at me, I have noth­ing to do with Jamaica’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue main­tain­ing a cost­ly Governor-General, or worse, hav­ing the Queen of England, as a tit­u­lar head of our Government.
Stockholm syn­drome? Your guess is as good as mine.

On the bal­lot, tomor­row is a range of issues that plague Jamaica, as they plague oth­er larg­er more pow­er­ful nations. Crime and vio­lence. Poverty. COVID-19, and a host of social prob­lems that will always be a part of the polit­i­cal and social landscape.
I believe that objec­tive­ly, the present Administration of the JLP led by the Young Andrew Holness has done a some­what admirable job. At the same time, I want to quick­ly jux­ta­pose the Prime Minister and his Government’s per­for­mance with a slew of fail­ings that should nev­er have occurred.
For exam­ple the slew of cor­rup­tion scan­dals than came to define the par­ty that mem­bers of his cab­i­net and oth­ers with­in the par­ty engaged in.
None of this should have hap­pened, and it is not good enough to say, “the PNP did it too’. Either you are bet­ter and a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive, or you are not.

I still believe this is an elec­tion for the JLP to lose. The nation’s COVID response under the Prime Minister and Health Minister Christopher Tufton has been one of the most for­ward-lean­ing any­where in the world.
That the infec­tion rate is on the rise in the coun­try, can­not cred­i­bly be laid at the feet of the Government, it belongs square­ly in the col­umn of the law­less­ness that has char­ac­ter­ized far too many of the Jamaican people.
This admin­is­tra­tion, like past PNP admin­is­tra­tions, has not done a cred­i­ble job of get­ting to the root of the gangs, and by exten­sion, the gang-vio­lence that emanates from that fail­ure. This ulti­mate­ly dri­ves the mur­der rate and oth­er vio­lent and brazen crimes in our country.
If the JLP los­es this elec­tion tomor­row night, [which I doubt it will] its post mortem exam­i­na­tion will not reflect that it is because Peter Phillips and the PNP promised Jamaicans to pay every­one’s light bill, at a time when his par­ty can hard­ly keep the lights on at par­ty head­quar­ters. Nor will it be from the litany of lies they have told in order to be once again giv­en the reins of pow­er, nei­ther will it be that they promised all things free to all people.
It most assured­ly is the Government’s mar­gin­al­iz­ing of the police. The cor­rup­tion that plagued the admin­is­tra­tion and the increas­ing lev­els of mur­ders that con­tin­ue to go unsolved.

This elec­tion is crit­i­cal for the two par­ties, if the JLP los­es the elec­tion it will solid­i­fy the nar­ra­tive that some of the more rad­i­cal ele­ments on the PNP’s far left has used for a cou­ple of decades now. That nar­ra­tive says that the JLP is a filler par­ty that is vot­ed in, only when the peo­ple are tired of the PNP and needs a break.
The gen­er­al idea is that the Jamaican peo­ple do not trust to give the JLP more than one term in office.
This nar­ra­tive start­ed after the JLP’s Edward Seaga called a snap elec­tion in 1983, a mere three years after tak­ing office in 1980.
In the 1980 elec­tions, Seaga & the JLP swept into pow­er on a 51 – 9 seat major­i­ty. At the time the leg­is­la­ture had a total of (60) seats as opposed to the six­ty-three (63) that exists today. The PNP did not con­test the snap elec­tions of 1983, it chose not to, because it knew it would be humil­i­at­ed once again at the polls.
Instead, it chose to label the JLP a bogus Government. Slander, and hyper­bole over fideli­ty to duty.

Nevertheless, by 1988 the very same Michael Manley who was swept out of office on a tsuna­mi of dis­sent, was back in office when all of the votes were count­ed.….… or more like when the bal­lot box stuff­ing was over in the pletho­ra of PNP gar­risons across the coun­try, in which there are gen­er­al­ly tens of thou­sands more votes cast for the PNP, than there were peo­ple liv­ing in the constituencies.
Such is Jamaican pol­i­tics, both par­ties have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly engaged in these prac­tices, the PNP has always been much bet­ter at it.
Michael Manley stayed on as Prime Minister until he was forced to demit office before his term end­ed due to ill-health. His then Deputy Percival James Patterson took over and the demise and destruc­tion of our coun­try were complete.
Despite Patterson, Portia Simpson Miller, and the PNP’s inep­ti­tude, gross cor­rup­tion, and incom­pre­hen­si­ble incom­pe­tence and graft, the JLP was only returned to office in 2007.
The JLP’s Bruce Golding formed the new JLP admin­is­tra­tion but Golding was forced to him­self demit office over the Christopher Duddus scan­dal known more as the Mannat Phelps and Phillips scandal.

A young Andrew Holness took over as Prime Minister after Golding left, and he sought to get his own man­date but it was not to be.….. at least not yet. The peo­ple soured on Golding’s han­dling of the Mannat Phelps and Phillips scan­dal, and so they turned to the dis­joint­ed, out of ideas PNP, and an even more hope­less Portia Simpson Miller, whose claim to fame is pop­ulism and longevi­ty in her par­ty and noth­ing more.
On the 5^th of January 2012, Portia Simpson Miller was sworn in as Prime Minister of Jamaica defeat­ing Andrew Holness, who was forced to start over and cul­ti­vate and cre­ate his own bona fides. Simpson miller her­self had tak­en over as Prime Minister from P J Patterson on the 30^th of March 2005, she was defeat­ed at the polls by the Bruce Golding led JLP.
Nevertheless, by March 3^rd of 2016, Andrew Michael Holness was once again the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
Not since Edward Seaga led the JLP to a resound­ing vic­to­ry at the polls in 1980, have the JLP been elect­ed to two con­sec­u­tive terms in office.
If Andrew Holness can pull off a win tomor­row that mon­key will for­ev­er be off the back of the JLP.
If he los­es, it will be because of the scan­dals that occurred on his watch and that’s it.
If on the oth­er hand, the PNP’s Peter Phillips fails to lead his par­ty to a vic­to­ry, he will be the only leader of the PNP in its his­to­ry not to have been elect­ed Prime Minister, assum­ing that he real­izes that it is his time to go and allow younger lead­ers to develop.

This arti­cle has been updat­ed to more accu­rate­ly speak to Dr. Phillip’s role as par­ty leader.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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