Voters In Jamaica & US Have Important Choices To Make A Mere Two Months Apart At The Ballot Box

Two very impor­tant things are in the works almost at the same time, there will be nation­al elec­tions in our tiny Jamaica and there will be a far more con­se­quen­tial elec­tion in the United States.
Consequential, not because of America’s size but because of its abil­i­ty to impact the entire globe in more ways than we care to admit.
The sce­nario seems just as sim­i­lar in some respects, in both tiny Jamaica, and it’s mam­moth neigh­bor to the north, only that, in Jamaica’s case, vot­ers need to keep the present Government in place, while in the United States, vot­ers must get rid of the exist­ing admin­is­tra­tion, if the democ­ra­cy as we know it is to survive.

How many times have we heard the say­ing “this is the most con­se­quen­tial elec­tion of our life­time”, come elec­tion time? As far as America is con­cerned, this is the most con­se­quen­tial elec­tion of all our life­times. If the sup­pos­ed­ly (old­est Democracy is to sur­vive), vot­ers who val­ue that imper­fect promise America rep­re­sents, must act to save it.
In Jamaica’s case, it may not be quite as crit­i­cal were the Opposition Peoples National Party to take the reins of Government on September 3^rd, but still, it would be fool­hardy for Jamaican vot­ers to put the coun­try back in the hands of the PNP after the débâ­cle which occurred between 1972 and 1980 and again between 1988 to 2007.
Decades of regres­sive poli­cies, that lead to the cor­rup­tion of both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, theft, crime, rust infest­ed zinc-fences, lack of infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment, pover­ty, an increase in law­less­ness across the soci­ety, and a total and com­plete den­i­gra­tion of our cul­tur­al norms.

Decent peo­ple in America rose up and made their feel­ings clear after George Floyd was lynched by Minneapolis police in plain view. To this day the cops who mur­dered Breonna Taylor have not been brought to jus­tice. Despite the thou­sands of oth­er cas­es of injus­tices man­i­fest­ed in police abuse, Trump admin­is­tra­tion cor­rup­tion & crim­i­nal­i­ty, a tear­ing down of norms and even bla­tant dis­re­gard for the laws that every­one else are forced to obey, there is a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that blind­ly fol­low the Trump clown-show like the rats behind the pied piper of Hamelin.
Children in cages torn away from their par­ents who were mere­ly seek­ing refuge, the appoint­ment of unqual­i­fied white men to high court judge­ships, the evis­cer­a­tion of the vot­ing rights act by the supreme court, and the sub­se­quent new assault on vot­ing rights across cer­tain south­ern states, all because of the actions of the John Roberts court.

Trump’s incom­pe­tent and poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal­ly-com­plic­it response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, has result­ed in over five mil­lion Americans cer­ti­fied infect­ed with the Coronavirus & over one hun­dred & sev­en­ty thou­sand dead, (170,000), in only a few months. Let that sink in for a minute.
If that hap­pened under a Democrat pres­i­dent, or God for­bid, had it hap­pened under President Obama, the Racist clown enablers in the Republican cau­cus­es in both the house and sen­ate would have brought the coun­try to a halt with fraud­u­lent hearings.
At the same time, most Government agen­cies are far short of the staff they need to do the job they are sup­posed to do and many do not have the sen­ate approved lead­ers they are required to have by law.
The econ­o­my is tank­ing, and Trump’s trade fights with China and oth­er coun­tries have caused many farm­ers to be on the edge of bankruptcy.
America’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is in the toi­let because of the deficit of lead­er­ship. The peo­ple in the streets tells only a small part of the story.
The cor­rup­tion and destruc­tion being done to the coun­try by this admin­is­tra­tion are all out in the open. The choice for vot­ers this cycle could not be clear­er, vote Democratic all the way down-tick­et, or kiss good­bye to the coun­try as you knew it.

In our lit­tle elec­tion back a [yaad], there are some dis­turb­ing utter­ances com­ing from the PNP’s camp, one can­di­date told his sup­port­ers they are will­ing to take the con­stituen­cy seat by force. Really now?
That gen­er­al­ly means rein­tro­duc­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence as a means of gain­ing pow­er. That kind of strat­e­gy has been in the DNA of the PNP all along, for­tu­nate­ly, Jamaicans on their own, have stepped away from the dark days of that kind of politics.
Unfortunately for the PNP lead­er­ship, in its des­per­ate bid to regain pow­er, sole­ly for being in pow­er, it still has not caught on that the peo­ple do not want what they are sell­ing, and thank­ful­ly so, because the cor­rup­tion, theft, and lack of progress is more than the peo­ple can take.
Sure, the rul­ing JLP is far from per­fect.….… Andrew Holness has not done near­ly enough to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing across the Island, not because he does­n’t want a crime-free Jamaica, but because he fails to grasp that erad­i­cat­ing the crim­i­nal gangs and get­ting the guns, means strong sup­port for law enforcement.
Andrew Holness’ has scant respect for the Police offi­cers who work their ass­es off to keep Jamaica and his rear end safe. This elec­tion he will most like­ly lose the police vote in the event micro-polling is done to look at the way the votes turn out in a detailed way.
Were he to lose this elec­tion, he would have no one to blame for his dis­re­spect to the police but himself.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, that would have been enough, more than enough to remove Andrew Holness and the JLP from office, sure he has a done a cred­i­ble job on the econ­o­my and han­dling the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but on the most impor­tant job he has as prime min­is­ter, he has failed and there is no deny­ing it.
A lead­er’s core func­tion is to pro­tect the citizens.
He has not done so.
More peo­ple con­tin­ue to die because his strat­e­gy of appease­ment of the crim­i­nal rights lob­by has ham­pered police efforts and has empow­ered the crim­i­nal gangs.
But the unpre­pared­ness of the PNP, the par­ty’s total unwill­ing­ness to eschew the pol­i­tics of old, should keep the par­ty out of Jamaica house for anoth­er five years.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
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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