Dawn Ritch, ContributorFollowing a voter turnout of 57 per cent, the People's National Party has been returned to power with a vastly-reduced majority.
There was no nine per cent or 10 per cent swing to the PNP therefore, indeed their sharply reduced majority demonstrates that there was a swing away from them. Even with what may probably have been the lowest voter turnout since 1944 and a war chest the size of Fort Knox, the PNP can be said to have barely managed to win. Six of the seats in their column are being challenged in the 35 to 25 parliamentary seat outcome.
In my opinion therefore, had not voter turnout been so low, we might today be looking at a huge Jamaica Labour Party majority in the House of Representatives.
Was it the heavy downpour of rain and flooding which caused voters to stay away from the polls, disgust with the two parties, voter intimidation or simple voter apathy?
No one will be able to answer that question definitively until the next general election. Certainly we would be wrong to rely upon opinion polls in the interim which, with the exception of Don Anderson's, have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. And even he predicted a voter turnout of 77 per cent and stated that a five per cent or more reduction in voter turnout at the polls could significantly affect the outcome of the election. In that case, he said, much could depend on which party is better organised on election day.
That having been said, this was therefore the most exciting general election I've ever watched. The JLP has lost it, and the most a recount can reasonably be expected to produce is a dead heat. If that happens there will be even more interesting times ahead.
Expect therefore a night of the long knives to come shortly. First on the chopping block will be Edward Seaga, Opposition Leader; next will be Bruce Golding, who failed to produce either the expected dowry from the private sector or a bounce in the opinion polls leading up the election, and next will be Babsy Grange for her loyalty to the status quo in the JLP.
I think that Mr. Seaga ought to be congratulated for producing a vastly stronger Opposition in the House of Representative out of such a low voter turnout. Mr. Golding did bring his own crew which strengthened the JLP's on-the-ground work. And Ms. Grange herself has now emerged with the second largest majority for the JLP. So I hope that when the knives come out, the JLP doesn't find itself cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Unless the JLP wins the election on these six challenges, it is likely that Mr. Seaga will step down. Were I a delegate at its next annual conference, I would have to vote for somebody like young James Robertson as leader.
Not only did he trounce a PNP Cabinet minister, and break the tandem St. Thomas East and West voting pattern, but he produced the kind of electoral results which only come from long and consistent hard work in the field, mental focus and a complete absence of whingeing. So I congratulate him on his excellent performance, and suggest he keep school for his elders.
In the PNP and wider society, jaws dropped when it seemed that Dr. Peter Phillips was about to lose his seat. He had been featured heaviest of all in the PNP's advertising after P.J. Patterson, and it was clear that he had the entire party machinery behind him.
Having won the general election, the PNP succession is no longer a burning issue. It is likely that they will wait to see what happens in the JLP before taking the plunge themselves. If a new JLP leader emerges with charisma as well as talent, Dr. Phillips will not be able to beat him or her, and the PNP will look to Mrs. Portia Simpson Miller.
At the present time, however, her hopes for ascendancy to the presidency of the PNP have dimmed. Not least because Dr. Paul Robertson and Mrs. Maxine Henry-Wilson have won their seats with substantial majorities, and therefore immeasurably strengthened the anti-Portia faction within the PNP. When the race begins for the party leadership, she starts with a massive handicap.
People are saying that Mr. Patterson is either the luckiest man in the world, or knows a good obeahman. To have a general election take place on a day when the island, already prone to flooding, was on flood watch is a piece of unmatched political good fortune. A low voter-turnout always favours the incumbent party, while a high voter-turnout favours the opposition, and a low voter-turnout is what we had. Bad luck is indeed worse than obeah.
Bad luck too for Mr. Patterson in winning the election, because he now has to clean up his own mess. And by that I mean the ballooning national debt created by his Minister of Finance's fiscal and monetary policies, and all the Government bodies which weighed in with double-page colour ads during and up to election day. At the rate of debt growth, borrowing and expenditure, a devaluation and a full-fledged IMF programme cannot be far off. As these things unfold Mr. Seaga might well conclude that in the end luck was on his side.
FOOTNOTE: If Mr. Espeut intends to make a newspaper column his vocation, he would do well to rely upon research rather than his memory. Instead he continues to be so lazy as to prefer to rely not only upon his faulty memory but upon research done by this column. His splitting of hairs is most tedious indeed, and a common failure of all fence-sitters. He's really rather lucky that only his hairs get split.
