PNP Delegates Failed Jamaica…

If the way PNP del­e­gates vot­ed on Saturday is indica­tive of the wider elec­torate which sup­ports that par­ty, the nation may be in for decades and decades of medi­oc­rity and stag­na­tion if the PNP is returned to office.
Given a clear choice between a young leader who want­ed to make a clean break from the failed ide­ol­o­gy of [demo­c­ra­t­ic socialism](sic), and the sta­tus quo, which has been an abject fail­ure for the coun­try, they chose the sta­tus quo.

The great­est non­sense against Bunting’s can­di­da­cy, both by (first )Peter Phillips, his “one PNP” cam­paign, and local media, is that (sec­ond) Peter Bunting and his “rise unit­ed” cam­paign was engaged in vote-buy­ing.
The hypocrisy of that argu­ment is lost on only the most hard­core sup­port­ers of Peter Phillips, and oth­ers who may not fol­low Jamaican pol­i­tics.
There has been no elec­tion on the Island in which vote-buy­ing has not played a part in the deci­sion of the poll.
Worse yet, as Peter Phillips sat in a radio stu­dio and bitched about the prac­tice, he as the leader of the par­ty pre­sides over one of the most intran­si­gent gar­risons oper­at­ed by the PNP.
As a mem­ber of par­lia­ment who comes from a gar­ri­son, No one, Phillips includ­ed, has any greater valid­i­ty than mem­bers who pay elec­tors to vote for them.
Vote buy­ing is rep­re­hen­si­ble, but vot­ers have a choice to take the mon­ey and vote for whomev­er they choose. That may have hap­pened to Bunting if reports of vote-buy­ing are true.
People in Garrison com­mu­ni­ties who are forced to vote for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date at the per­il of death, is a whole dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish.

That aside, Peter Phillips and the old cabal of (eat-a-food­ers) who presided over 22 plus years of Jamaica’s decline has been val­i­dat­ed by the par­ty’s del­e­gates.
The les­son inher­ent in the Saturday vote is that at the crit­i­cal del­e­gate lev­el of the par­ty, there is no recog­ni­tion that the PNP des­per­ate­ly needs to change.
Many sup­port­ers of the gov­ern­ing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) sees the affir­ma­tion of Peter Phillips to head the PNP as a gift to their par­ty’s chances when next gen­er­al elec­tions are held.
However, the much-need­ed trans­for­ma­tion of the PNP from an old tired out-of-touch left­ist par­ty, to a 21^st-cen­tu­ry par­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the needs of the coun­try, far exceeds any ben­e­fits the JLP may derive from Phillips’ affirmation.

Jamaica has all of the com­po­nents to posi­tion itself as a nation head­ed for full first-world sta­tus in 20 to 30 years. As such the two polit­i­cal par­ties which share pow­er and gov­er­nance must both be agents of pro­gres­sive empow­er­ment if those goals are to be accom­plished.
A polit­i­cal par­ty which is still stuck cham­pi­oning failed big-gov­ern­ment poli­cies is bound to wipe out any gains that the present par­ty may accom­plish.
Even after an unprece­dent­ed ²²¹⁄₂ year run by the PNP, Jamaicans still do not have clean run­ning water in their pipes. Local roads are like the moon’s sur­face and still, in some areas, there are no roads at all.
Hospitals are ver­i­ta­ble hos­pices of death, and there was no build­ing of schools wor­thy of men­tion.
In fact, the only thing that the PNP can be cred­it­ed with is the out of con­trol crime and the den­i­gra­tion of our cul­ture.

The Police Department was allowed to dete­ri­o­rate to the point that it became total­ly inef­fec­tu­al. At every turn, the PNP’s tenure in lead­er­ship has been a colos­sal night­mare for the coun­try, even if not for its cultish sup­port­er.
In ²²¹⁄₂ years, the PNP was not able to iden­ti­fy a sin­gle infra­struc­tur­al project and com­plete it on behalf of the Jamaican peo­ple. On what basis would they expect the peo­ple to return that par­ty to power?

It is for those rea­sons that I believe, that though Peter Bunting is a mem­ber of that par­ty, his oppo­si­tion to social­ism as a direc­tion for the PNP was a valu­able first step for the par­ty and coun­try.
Unfortunately for the coun­try and par­ty, PNP del­e­gates decid­ed to stick with an old dis­joint­ed and cor­rupt out-of-touch polit­i­cal par­ty whose time has come and gone.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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