Note To PNP: When The Government Fail Everyone Fail, If Of Course We Believe In Country Over Party..

With the greatest of intentions and the support of Jamaicans of good faith and will, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister and his Administration will have a difficult time in carrying out it’s task of transforming the Island from Poverty to prosperity.

All Jamaicans have a vest­ed inter­est in the suc­cess of our coun­try yet at this point our coun­try is posi­tioned as a bar­rel at the edge of a clif­f’s being rolled uphill by the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tion and Jamaicans hop­ing for a bet­ter nation. Unfortunately there is the lit­tle issue of huge swaths of peo­ple who sup­port the los­ing par­ty who are on the oth­er side of the bar­rel who are push­ing back hard, hop­ing to push the coun­try over the cliff to prove their par­ty is bet­ter. Pushing the bar­rel down-hill is always going to be an eas­i­er task and there­in lies the chal­lenge for our country.

It pains me to say it but there are Jamaicans who are active­ly cheer­ing for the fail­ure of the new admin­is­tra­tion. They do so with­out an con­sid­er­a­tion that fail­ure of the Administration means fail­ure of their country.
Is it fair to say that these Jamaicans favor par­ty over coun­try? If we answer yes we must exam­ine the rea­son why these peo­ple are so endued with their par­ty at the per­il of country.

Like many Jamaicans liv­ing in the dias­po­ra I hope and pray for a new Jamaica which will offer the Jamaican peo­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to take care of their fam­i­lies and edu­cate their chil­dren with­out hav­ing to strug­gle against impov­er­ish­ment. It is fair to say that most Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra want a Jamaica not inun­dat­ed with crime. They see crime as the deal-break­er as it per­tains to their return and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the econ­o­my, I share that sentiment.

In 2008 Barack Obama made his­to­ry when he was elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States of America.
In a scin­til­lat­ing book author Robert Draper detailed that on the night of January 20^th 2009 a group of Republicans gath­ered at the Caucus Room in Washington, an upscale restau­rant where a New York strip steak costs $51.
The pur­pose of the dinner/​meeting was to dis­cuss ways in which Republicans would obstruct the new pres­i­dent and bring him down , the idea was to obstruct on every bill.

They would take back the House in November 2010, which they did, and use it as a spear to mor­tal­ly wound Obama in 2011 and take back the Senate and White House in 2012, Draper writes.
According to Draper Congressman Kevin McCarthy told the group, “If you act like you’re the minor­i­ty, you’re going to stay in the minor­i­ty,” “We’ve got­ta chal­lenge them on every sin­gle bill and chal­lenge them on every sin­gle cam­paign.” On the more imme­di­ate future, they dis­cussed tar­gets such as Charlie Rangel, chair­man of the House ways and means com­mit­tee, who Gingrich said was vul­ner­a­ble over his per­son­al tax­es. They would also tar­get Treasury sec­re­tary Tim Geithner, demon­strate unit­ed and unyield­ing oppo­si­tion to the pres­i­den­t’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies, and release neg­a­tive ads against vul­ner­a­ble Democratic mem­bers of Congress.

Attending the din­ner were House mem­bers Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Others present were for­mer House Speaker and future – and failed – pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Newt Gingrich and the Republican strate­gist Frank Luntz, who organ­ised the din­ner and sent out the invi­ta­tions. Democrats con­demn GOP’s plot to obstruct Obama as ‘appalling and sad’.

One of the neg­a­tives which arose from the strat­e­gy meet­ing is the total grid­lock in the Nation’s cap­i­tal and the rise of Donald J Trump. People’s National Party sup­port­ers are not the only polit­i­cal ani­mals who are more invest­ed in the suc­cess of their par­ty over the suc­cess of their coun­try. Neither are the Republicans in the United States. In twist­ed ways many peo­ple I have spo­ken to , includ­ing PNP and Republican sup­port­ers , argue that they hope that the par­ty in pow­er fail so their par­ty can take the reins and succeed.
It’s a con­vo­lut­ed rea­son­ing which defies ratio­nal thought or rea­son. If the par­ty in pow­er suc­ceeds , isn’t that a good thing, isn’t that the end game? Obviously not so for Republicans or many PNP supporters .

If suc­cess , regard­less of which par­ty’s poli­cies ensures it is not the endgame then obvi­ous­ly suc­cess of the nation is not para­mount to Republicans and it cer­tain­ly is not to PNP supporters.
Which brings us to the real issue which seem to be con­trol and pow­er over state resources. Over the last two or three elec­tion cycles less and less Jamaicans have lost their lives to polit­i­cal vio­lence. In fact polit­i­cal killings has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly when com­pared to pre­ced­ing cycles.

Some ana­lysts have con­tend­ed that this may be due to dimin­ished clout of politi­cians over tra­di­tion­al enforcers. They argue that mem­bers of par­lia­ment has less and less tax-pay­ers funds to dole out to con­stituents for their support.
Some have also con­tend­ed that many young men who would nor­mal­ly be out com­mit­ting vio­lent acts on behalf of their par­ties are engaged in more lucra­tive crim­i­nal activ­i­ties like scam­ming and robberies.
I am inclined to believe over­all that there are sim­ply not enough slush mon­ey in the hands of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to inspire the kind of loy­al­ty that once exist­ed. That’s a good thing .

Shockingly though not sur­pris­ing­ly it appears that the gen­er­al con­sen­sus of the los­ing par­ty’s sup­port­ers is a fer­vent desire to see the new admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston fail.
How does this young new leader assure and con­vince those peo­ple that if he and the gov­ern­ment fail they fail? How does he con­vince them con­trary to what they were reared to believe, that polit­i­cal par­ties are tools to nation-build­ing and not the ulti­mate goal.
Could it be that the past ungra­cious behav­ior of the los­ing par­ty’s lead­er­ship has poi­soned the well of good­will which ought to exist when one par­ty leaves office and anoth­er take over?

If lead­ers lead the peo­ple will fol­low. Yet what appears to be hap­pen­ing is a sense of nit-pick­ing at the new admin­is­tra­tion which has­n’t yet ful­ly warmed the seats on the gov­ern­ment side of Gordon House.
I under­stand the Labor Party has always been held to a high­er stan­dard but the par­ty deserves the oppor­tu­ni­ty to set­tle into office and a chance to exe­cute it’s agenda.
The par­ty cam­paigned on a plat­form of “from pover­ty to pros­per­i­ty” , it must have a chance to execute.
If the peo­ple believe they can con­tin­ue busi­ness as usu­al with the sense of chaos which exist then that bat­tle is already lost.

One of the lure of the People’s National Party to the mass­es is it’s any­thing goes style of Governance.
That gov­er­nance style which has been in place and con­trolled pow­er for 32 of the last 44 years has seen a mas­sive rise in urban sprawl. Massive increase in pover­ty. A mas­sive increase in squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties which have encir­cled once pris­tine com­mu­ni­ties. Potentially most dam­ag­ing is the mass pro­lif­er­a­tion of vend­ing stalls which take over entire streets pre­vent­ing the free-flow of traf­fic plac­ing the lives of entire com­mu­ni­ties at risk.

There is a gen­er­al sense on the part of many Jamaicans that the rule of law is not impor­tant or at best it’s sec­ondary to their means of mak­ing a liv­ing. The People’s National Party main­tained a form of qua­si gov­er­nance amidst the chaos which nev­er addressed the rot but allowed it to metastasize.
No hig­gler believe he/​she should be removed from the streets, or in front of tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es where they sell the same things inside the stores but pay no taxes.
No squat­ter believes the auto-repair shop he ille­gal­ly cob­bled togeth­er beside some­one’s home which depre­ci­ates that prop­er­ty own­ers home is a prob­lem. Moving him away is a major prob­lem, it demon­strates that the Government is against poor peo­ple. Such is the Jamaican men­tal­i­ty and the PNP thrives in that chaos.

Republican obstruc­tion pre­cip­i­tat­ed the rise of a fas­cist called Donald J Trump. The par­ty is now stuck in a quandary unsure how it will han­dle the threat Trump pos­es to it’s legit­i­ma­cy. Many argue the estab­lish­ment has already lost con­trol of the par­ty to the unsta­ble bigot.
The Leader of the Opposition par­ty has cre­at­ed a so-called Council of advis­ers which has turned some heads , this is a depar­ture from the role the oppo­si­tion par­ty tra­di­tion­al­ly plays in mon­i­tor­ing the activ­i­ties of Government and report­ing to the people.
We will be keep­ing an eye on this coun­cil to point out to the peo­ple whether or not we believe it is an organ of obstruc­tion instead of a legit­i­mate oppo­si­tion as is pro­vid­ed for in the constitution.