Empty Seats Not A Good Look For Party Leader.….

Leader of the Political oppo­si­tion Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) Andrew Holness spoke at a sparse­ly attend­ed event recent­ly at the Medgar Evers College in new York city.
The Jamaica Gleaner glee­ful­ly pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that the event was a JLP show which was sparse­ly attend­ed then was forced to retract the lie after the facts of who put on the event emerged.
Notwithstanding, Holness obvi­ous­ly was not amused when he turned up to speak and saw the small audi­ence wait­ing to hear him speak.
Holness report­ed­ly said quote“I’m obvi­ous­ly look­ing to see more people,”.

The event held in part­ner­ship with the Medgar Evers College and the Proud Jamaica Foundation kick-start­ed what , con­fer­ence direc­tor, Marcia Meikle-Naughton said is a lead­er­ship sum­mit series.
A video of the event which sur­faced on social media which this pub­li­ca­tion will not fea­ture because of the poor qual­i­ty did show a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed room at the time the video was recorded.

This ought to be a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for Andrew Holness. Comrades would not have allowed Portia Simpson Miller or any of their top offi­cers to walk into a sit­u­a­tion like this which could cast that Official in a less than pos­i­tive light.
The Labor Party still has not learned the val­ue of pop­ulism and inclu­sion of the com­mon man in what they are doing. Clearly they still do not under­stand the impor­tance of perceptions.

Even though the event was booked as a Leadership Summit[sic] (what­ev­er that means), Holness and his advanced peo­ple (assum­ing there are any), ought to have used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demand that as part of his show­ing to speak, con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers fill the hall with peo­ple friend­ly to the labor par­ty and it’s principles.
In this busi­ness of pol­i­tics optics are crit­i­cal in shap­ing perceptions.
The Grammys, Oscars, Tony’s and oth­er events use seat fillers to ensure that their events send the cor­rect message.
Holness advance peo­ple will have to under­stand that each event he is asked to attend and address is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case his lead­er­ship skills as well as to impress those he address­es that he is a leader wor­thy of their time and attention.