IT IS distressing that yet another JAS presidential election has been marred not only by acrimonious rivalry but in this case serious claims of electoral malpractice. By allowing itself to proceed under such a cloud the JAS is spending capital the organisation does not have.
The bickering and charges that have overshadowed the election and campaigning exercises over these many years have added to public apathy towards the organisation at the very time it should have been striving to carve out a new direction for itself in the light of a rapidly changing society and world.
It is sad indeed that at a time when the farming community should be striving towards new and better ways of doing things its premier organisation remains rooted firmly in a by now familiar destructive internal political wrangle. It is incredible that none of the warring factions seems to have realised that public perception of the value of the organisation is so low that it cannot see what they are fighting about.
One of the tragedies of the JAS, we think, is its decades-old domination by personalities rather than programmes, so that leadership tended to become an end in itself and not a means of advancement. In the process the membership has tended to become moribund in itself. The same issues that dominated its annual conferences 30 or 40 years ago still do today, and by and large they are raised by the same set of people, older but by no means wiser.
As things are today the passage of over 100 years in the life of the organisation has merely added years to its body and the so-called 'sleeping giant' has no more potency than the biblical Samson shorn of his locks!
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
