Junior Dowie/ Staff Photographer
Prime Minister-elect, P.J. Patterson, amidst hordes of supporters, holds his hand in the four-fingered gesture showing that he had achieved the fourth term, following the PNP's win on election night, October 16.Robert Buddan, Contributor
Congratulations to the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Both did very well on October 16. The political parties, Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC), security forces, the Political Ombudsman, the Crime Management Unit (CMU), election day workers, observers and most voters, conducted their roles in an exemplary fashion.
Mr. Seaga was gracious in acknowledging this, while Mr. Patterson was humble in accepting the victory. The result was not great for either party but it was good for our democracy. My great regrets were the low voter turn-out and the violence leading up to the elections.
The important lesson is institution-building. The efforts to strengthen the electoral administration have paid off. The more balanced Parliament will strengthen the legislature and demand a more consensual form of parliamentary politics. We must turn to other aspects of political institution building now. Constitutional reform and a national integrity system must be among the priorities. There are lessons for the parties to learn about preparing for power.
THE PNP: REFORM AND RENEWAL.
When the PNP lost the elections of 1980, Michael Manley wasted no time in convening a committee to assess what the party had done wrong in the 1970s and what it needed to correct in the future. Despite the trauma of its loss, the PNP begun the process of reassessment by November 1980, in just a few weeks after the October elections, when it established an Appraisal Committee. Manley himself proceeded to write his book, Struggle in the Periphery (1982), to conduct a personal study of what had happened under his leadership. He explained in a 1982 interview, "We are taking this period in opposition to find out what went wrong, to develop strategies so that it can't happen again." Furthermore, throughout the 1980s, the party held regular meetings of its National Executive Committee to debate policy issues in preparation for its eventual return to power.
The first investigation into the causes of the defeat came from the party's Appraisal Committee. The committee comprised a mix of older and younger members from its different ideological sections. They were Paul Robertson, Paul Burke, Horace Clarke, Omar Davies, Carlyle Dunkley, Norman Girvan, Maxine Henry Wilson, Seymour Mullings, and Hugh Small. Manley left himself and P. J. Patterson out of the Committee so that it could do its work without being influenced by them. Some of these younger members would emerge to fill leadership positions in the 1990s.
The Appraisal Committee released its report in October 1981. It was a frank assessment. The reasons it gave for the defeat were, the economic situation, crime, violence and the role of the security forces; the communist scare, the public perception of the party and its leadership, disunity within the party, and the conclusion that Members of Parliament, party workers and canvassers had lost touch with the people.
The report said the communist scare was a "major" factor which flourished in the climate of the rapid deterioration of the economic situation after 1977, the sharp and publicly aired divisions within the party in 1977 and 1980 over the IMF question and the general atmosphere of anxiety produced by the violence and terrorism in 1980.
The Government, it went on, lost its moral authority, the respect and confidence of the security forces, making it more difficult to control crime and violence which ultimately led to the demoralisation of party workers and supporters.
To make matters worse, the disunity of the party was reproduced in the Cabinet and Government making it impossible to govern effectively, and to manage the economy and deal with the mounting challenge to the Government's authority. This disunity also limited the organisational and mobilisational effectiveness of the party's election campaign.
GOVERN EFFECTIVELY
The report recommended that the party work to govern effectively around clearly defined and commonly shared positions. It also suggested that the party leadership display public behaviour that was consistent with its philosophy. It advised that the party's organisation, political education and mobilisation activity serve as the link with the majority. It emphasised that the party equip itself adequately and technically to govern, especially in the areas of the economy, security and information. The party blamed both itself and the Government for the failures of the 1970s.
The report was released at the time of the party's first annual conference since the defeat. In Manley's address to that conference, he said, "We have suffered a major defeat. But after a defeat you must have a period of thought, of introspection and you must have the humility to look at all that has happened in the spirit of self-criticism - to try and analyse what were the factors that led to our defeat." Manley felt the party would benefit in the future from this and would return to Government as a more prepared team.
Manley was right. The PNP has benefited from those years of re-thinking. The party won the Local Government elections of 1986 and has not looked back since. It has applied the lessons it has learnt. It has remained remarkably united as a party and Government. It has replaced ideological politics with pragmatic politics, populist leadership with statesman-like leadership, concentrated more on making Government effective, and on economic issues. The PNP spent its years in opposition preparing for power by making itself credible. It had felt so secure about itself as a party that it presented itself in the 1997 elections as "the best choice." Now in 2002, the poll surveys have shown that in the view of the electorate, it is the best party to govern.
The party should use the results of every election, including this one, to make new assessments. It is that kind of party. I'm sure it will.
THE JLP - A FAILURE TO PREPARE
The story of the JLP has been quite different. It has continuously failed to prepare for power. The leadership has refused to take responsibility or even to acknowledge its failure. After losing in 1989, Mr. Seaga held that the Government had not failed, it was the party (workers) who had failed to get the message of the Government's self-claimed successes out. Rather than prepare new ideas and policies, the JLP, as Delroy Chuck used to admit, simply waited for the PNP to fail, as it was sure it would, and then return to power.
In the months after the 1989 elections, the party refused to do any reassessment. Its leaders, Mr. Edward Seaga, Mr. Bruce Golding and Mr. Ryan Peralto all went on leave to tend to personal business rather than deal with party business. It was during this opening that Pearnel Charles, Errol Anderson, Douglas Vaz, Karl Samuda and Edmund Bartlett, some of whom were acting for the chairman and general secretary, tried and were winning support, for running a more open and professional party machinery.
Rather than working with this trend, Seaga, Golding and Peralto suspended their leave, went back to active duty and re-established control over the party's old ways of doing things. From there, things got progressively worse.
Out of this came a running battle between the party's reformers and its old guard with dramatic and unpredictable switches of alliances continuing right up to Mr. Golding's controversial return to the party on the eve of the recent elections.
The quarrels, charges and insults became notoriously public. The party became a spawning ground for dissidents - the Gang of Five, the Western Eleven, Golding's JLP group within the NDM, the Committee to Rebuild the JLP, not to mention individual quarrels with and campaigns against Mike Henry, Pearnel Charles and Karl Samuda.
Mr. Seaga continued to chastise his own men for what he perceived as plots and conspiracies and to attack public officials and institutions whenever they disagreed with him, right down to the West Kingston Enquiry into political violence. He dismissed all of these as campaigns to demonise him. The result was that instead of improving its position after 1989, the JLP did worse in the elections of 1993 and 1997, getting fewer of the popular votes and seats than it had in 1989.
The JLP improved its machinery and contained its quarrels from about the year 2000. That started to pay dividends. But the public did not have enough time to feel convinced that the JLP had really got past its problems. The party has a new opportunity now. It must have open discussions and frank assessments. Its new leadership must put the fighting behind it and address the future of the party in a mature way. Mr. Seaga, like Mr. Manley before him, must enter a period of sincere introspection and invite the JLP to make its decision about his future role, if he doesn't make it himself.
Norman Manley had said that the formation of the JLP was Bustamante's greatest contribution to Jamaica's democracy. For Jamaican democracy, to renew itself, the JLP, a foundation of that democracy, must do the same. I wish the party well.
Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm
