Dawn Ritch, Contributor
AS SUCCESSIVE opinion polls have shown year after year, Portia Simpson Miller is the most popular politician among the Jamaican electorate. What was always an open question was whether or not her own party was anywhere near as keen.
Last Sunday, that question was laid to rest in the most indisputable fashion. She launched her campaign for the presidency of the People's National Party (PNP) before an audience set conservatively at 7,000 people. The building was jam-packed and a huge crowd was outside. It ought to be patently clear therefore, to all the doubting Thomases, that she has the support of her party.
In politics, one can lay on the buses, even the box-lunches and a per diem of $1,000, and still be faced with the shame and humiliation of empty buses trundling into town.
ENVIABLE TURNOUT
The turnout that Mrs. Simpson Miller had was a turnout that would justifiably be the envy of both the PNP and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) public sessions at either of their annual conferences. Understandably, radio commentators have since slipped over and over again by referring to the event as a conference instead of a launch.
Mrs. Simpson Miller has also demonstrated that she has the respect of her party supporters. One telling detail proves it. Whether in the JLP or the PNP, it has proven totally impossible in recent decades for any meeting of even 70 party faithfuls to have a political meeting without it being engulfed in a blue haze of ganja smoke.
Seven thousand comrades gathered from all over the island to support her and there was not a whiff of ganja in the air, neither in the building nor outside in its precincts. This is totally unheard of. It was one thing for Mrs. Simpson Miller to field an orderly political crowd as she did. That alone is an unprecedented accomplishment. It was quite another to field one that didn't burn a single spliff.
I understand that she sent word out that she wanted a big launch, but one in good order, and no ganja smoking in the place. Seven thousand people listened. If she can get a rambunctious and 'hard-back' political crowd to do that, she can lead a country.
I certainly never thought I'd see the day when an orderly political crowd could ever again be fielded anywhere, much less one with children sitting in their seats playing with balloons. Mrs. Simpson Miller and her team accomplished that. Such an achievement cannot go unremarked. It is one thing to have support and something else again to manage it. She has done both.
OBVIOUS PLEASURE
As to charges of intellectual incapacity, she has since gone on radio discussion programmes like 'Beyond the Headlines', 'Breakfast Club' and 'Perkins on Line' and batted with the best of them. On her feet and on her own, she has enjoyed herself to the hilt doing it. The obvious pleasure she has taken in these exchanges is one peculiar only to people who know that they are consistently underestimated, and find it amusing.
I remember saying to her earlier this year that people keep asking me who is going to be her Finance Minister. Her response was immediate and quizzical: "So what, I can't get people to work for me?" That put paid to the argument, and I've never returned to it.
Inevitable comparisons are now being made with Michael Manley, but she's much bigger than he, but I'm glad for it. She is, as Basil Buck said last week on radio, "a breath of fresh air", and he was not referring to the absence of ganja smoke.
Vague on the details of what she will do differently, Mrs. Simpson Miller has said on radio that she has them well thought out, but is not presenting them yet. She has no intention, it seems, of allowing her presidential rivals to run off in her clothes while she's taking a dip in the stream. Unusual among politicians, she doesn't crave publicity, no doubt because she has a full and busy life outside of the pages of newspapers and broadcasts.
That too I like, because I'm really tired of politicians who never miss a chance to stand in front of a television camera while they allow their country to go to hell. Everybody has to work for a living, and so should they. Too many of them think a press release is the answer to a prayer, and that being in a public forum is to have died and gone to heaven.
Mrs. Simpson Miller's detractors also said she had no campaign financing, because big business would never give it to a girl from 'down the road'. That launch last Sunday was not only meticulously organised, it cost a packet. She not only has the money, but spent it well. She has proven she has the mass support of the PNP groups and delegates, and can also manage them. Just in that respect alone, she is in a class of her own.
TIGHT-LIPPED ON PLANS
Commentators are tying themselves up in knots wanting sheets of paper with bullet points of this policy and that. She always plays her cards close to her chest. Although she says she will go into detail later on in the campaign, I'll be surprised if she does. She has the patience of Job, and the tolerance to match, and now she has the experience.
Last year, the question on everybody's lips was: "Where is her team?" That launch was the work of her team. There ought no longer to be further doubt therefore, that she not only has one, but it is capable.
Dr. Omar Davies and Dr. Peter Phillips haven't been able to field five hundred PNP supporters anywhere. On Sunday, they must have envied her just for the overflow, let alone the crowd inside. Those so-called 'no-name' people on her team accomplished what a raft of experienced campaign chairmen and co-chairmen on her rivals' teams could not.
After a display like that, both her rivals for the presidency of the PNP must seriously be thinking about hanging up their spurs to save themselves any further embarrassment. But a fact of politics is that the game is not well-played unless somebody gets a drubbing.
When the lions have killed the gladiators, the crowd shrieks for the Christians because somebody else must get eaten today. So it was an ancient Rome, and so it is today in politics as a modern spectacle.
It is said that only one of her rivals will go up against her, that one of them will withdraw. Whether both go up, or only one, the country is now on the edge of its seat. Bets are on that it will be the greatest knockout of all time. Portia is the favourite, so the odds are low and the gamblers are in it just for the sport. I hope those guys don't 'ketch dem fraid and run'.
