Dawn RitchIn order for the People's National Party (PNP) to win an unprecedented fifth term, it needs to go through an obvious renewal. This is all the more necessary since there's been anything but an orderly transition of power.
The PNP has been in power for 17 years, so long that the majority of Jamaicans have known no other. Nobody could, upon sober reflection, conclude that the administrations of either Michael Manley or P.J. Patterson was a national success. The litany of alarming statistics available bears this out. Indeed, that is a matter impatient of debate.
They've won successive elections because of their party machinery and
timing. They time the election with the business of government.
The latter is not a fool-proof system. The then prime minister Edward Seaga tried that after a sterling performance in restoring the country following Hurricane Gilbert. But the country just turned its back on him. It didn't even matter that after the economic fall-out of the earlier Michael Manley regime, he'd restored the country as a whole to a sustained growth path.
There was just something about Edward Seaga that didn't sit well with them. No amount of overseas public relations and advertising advice could change that. Nor any opinion polls no matter how frequently taken. There was just no spin that could be put on that ball.
On the other hand Portia Simpson Miller needs no spin, but she has yet to put her stamp upon the PNP. Indeed she's had rather a leisurely approach to both that, and putting her stamp on the government itself. The irony is of course that all of Jamaica is Portia territory.
Mrs. Simpson Miller continues to be in fine fettle. It is as though she's convinced that time is completely on her side, and wishes to savour every move. If so, it is not a masculine approach to governance. Were a man in power, everybody who should have been fired would have already gone, clutching only a pay slip and a retraining manual. And not a soul would have thought him bloody-minded for doing it.
Tired old horses
But the fact remains that no political party can renew itself unless people see new faces, instead of the same tired old horses. Mrs. Simpson Miller's horse runs at a gallop, but can anybody else in her party keep up? This is something that only the party president herself can demonstrate.
She'll have to show us therefore what she has in the line-up of candidates who will represent the PNP. Never in the history of Jamaican politics has the quality of the candidate line-up been more important. Mrs. Simpson Miller's popularity has held steady at 60 per cent no matter what. But that
doesn't change the fact that four successive PNP wins would make any voter jaundiced.
Those registered to vote were asked whom they'd like to see form the next government. The result was 48.5 per cent to the PNP, and 44.1 per cent to the JLP.
When those registered to vote were also asked whom they were likely to vote for, the PNP's lead was reduced to a minuscule 0.4 per cent.
These results demonstrate that the sentiment in the country is towards the PNP, but due entirely to the popularity of its new president. The party itself, while still in the lead, is desperately in need of renewal. Mrs. Simpson Miller's enduring popularity alone will not carry the PNP into office.
The hierarchy of the PNP traduced her reputation during the internal elections. In any event she still won. What became obviously dented as a result was the party, and not her.
But that rancorous election armed the middle class and the Jamaica Labour Party with the ammunition that she has no brain, and is held in contempt by her colleagues. According to that view, there can therefore be no change in any administration led by her. It appears that none of them thought she had a chance of winning, and so what they said couldn't possibly matter. But she did, and it does.
It jeopardises the thing Mrs. Simpson Miller has in spades among the Jamaican people. That is their trust. I was shocked then to see the PNP so profligate with it, and for that alone their heads should be smacked. No pun intended.
Internal election
P. J. Patterson himself bears responsibility for the disorderly transition in the PNP. He put off the internal contest twice, and kept saying he was going and didn't. After that the internal election was guaranteed to degenerate into a free for all. But she still won, and did it gracefully without one wry word said about the other contestants by her or anyone on her team.
All that is water under the bridge. Today at the 68th annual conference of the PNP, Madam Prime Minister will have to show them who is in charge. Long after they learn to behave themselves, long after she wins the next general election and installs a Cabinet of her own making, no one should expect to see a kitchen cabinet or the emergence of any new éminence grise.
Mrs. Simpson Miller has been stabbed in the back by her own people so often and so long that she's now adept at walking through the raindrops without getting wet. That is how she survived for much more than 17 years. She is unlikely to forget the lesson. Influence peddlers and information barterers are in for lean times. Indeed what upsets them most is that they have already fallen upon stony ground.
I hope, therefore, that seven months is long enough for them to realise that there'll be no grass growing there, much less fruits to pick. Life can only improve in Jamaica when everybody has to use the proper channels.
The PNP candidate who said on radio that 'The man who plays by the rules gets shafted' did not win the election. That was Dr. Peter Phillips. There is no reason to assume therefore that such an ethos will become the ruling philosophy of a Simpson Miller-led administration. Quite the opposite in fact.
The real disappointment in the country is that those who succeed by breaking the rules still haven't got shafted. It was Peter Phillips who raised the matter, and nobody is about to forget it.
The ball is, therefore, in Madame Prime Minister's court. The way she plays it will determine whether or not the country believes that she is indeed about renewal.
