Ian Boyne, Contributor

The issue is not whether the People's National Party (PNP) is really ahead in the polls. The issue is why the PNP is not clearly behind in the polls after 18 years of governing, and with the country as badly managed as the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) charges.

The fact that we are even having a conversation, let alone controversy, over whether the PNP is ahead speaks volumes for the PNP and raises serious questions for the JLP. It is not enough to say that the PNP in Government has resources to keep its base satisfied and, therefore, that explains why the party is still very much in the race.

Why, if the PNP is managing the economy as disastrously as Audley Shaw and others say, is that not evident to the large percentage of undecided voters? Are they so blind and dumb?

Is Portia that mesmeric as to put those people in a stupor? As strong as her appeal is, it has proven to be trimable, as the polls indicate. Besides, there is a substantial 30 per cent - higher than the standings for any of the parties - which has clearly not been sucked in by her magic.

So the Portia factor alone cannot explain the fact that the PNP is very much in this electoral race, at the very least, and is ahead in the polls, if all the polls are to be believed.

The fact of the matter is that the PNP has not governed the countryas recklessly as the JLP has charged. The people in their personal lives do not experience the sense of disaster and utter hopelessness which JLP campaigners speak about. In fact, the empirical evidence indicates that a lot has been accomplished. The PNP's standings in the polls were boosted after the Prime Minister's Budget speech in which she outlined a number of things achieved by her party and her one-year administration. (The party has also stepped up its campaign on the ground and has been whipping up the enthusiasm of its base.)

No amount of JLP propaganda can get around the fact that inflation is at single digit, that interest rates and even the much-talked-about debt-to-GDP ratio have been declining, and that the Net International Reserves are robust. The economy grew last year and is on track to grow even faster this year; tourism has been booming, construction is vibrant and agriculture chalked up a nearly 16 per cent growth last year. If all this makes you dismiss me as a PNP propagandist, then either declare you have no respect for empirical data or show the evidence that the data have been corrupted.

If you look at investments in our air and sea ports, highway construction and telecommunications, it is evident that much has been achieved. The IMF, which is not under the charismatic grip of Portia, has said, "Recent economic performance has been remarkably strong with Jamaica on target this fiscal year to achieve its best growth in a decade".

Grassroots improvements

But it has not only been at the macro level that improvements have been made. There have been a number of improvements at the grassroots level. Just this past Thursday the Prime Minister commissioned the Pedro Plains Irrigation System, one of three flagship projects which will have a significant impact on production, productivity and the quality of rural life. Significant amounts have been spent to improve poor people's access to water, electricity, housing and roads. People - not just hard-core party supporters - have beenderiving benefits from PNP rule, and this is why, according to the polls, there is no mass revolt against the PNP Government, even after 18 years of the party's being in power. We will all soon know, of course, whether the polls were way off mark.

However, let nothing I have said give the impression that I am so naive as to believe that the outcome of the election will be determined purely by rational, dispassionate calculation. It is not he who presents the best arguments or he or she who wins the debate who will get the prize. I am simply saying people's experience is not one of wholesale disappointment and frustration, as JLP propaganda suggests. People are not uniformly experiencing gloom and doom and that is why, according to the polls, there is no swing to the JLP.

Elections are about affective issues. People largely decide with their hearts, not their heads. The spoils will go not necessarily to the party with the best ideas or programmes, but to the party which can market itself more effectively and which can connect with people's emotions, not their head space.

Marketing, framing and positioning are critically important. This is why if I were the PNP president, I would be extremely careful about how I am perceived on the platform. Portia has to be concerned and careful about how she comes across, not just to the upper classes, to all the classes.

Portia now has to watch her words very carefully. She is not just communicating to die-hard, sympathetic comrades gathered before her. She is communicating to the entire Jamaica and to the world. More significantly, she needs to appeal to the uncommitted voters, who judge politicians harshly.

Image management is crucially important in election campaigning. A day is a long time in politics. It is not hard for the PNP to slip behind in the polls. It just takes one mistake, one issue that sufficiently turns off the people and which can be exploited by the media.

Portia is the focus

The party that is ahead has the most to lose and, therefore, has to be the most circumspect. It is clear from the G2K ads and the JLP campaigning that Portia is the focus of the JLP campaign. They are smart in targeting her. For she is the PNP's greatest strength, and some critics would say, only strength. They are almost forgetting about the party and going after her. (In attacking the party, they are at pains to point out that "she was there" for all these 18 years when the party was "wrecking Jamaica")

The JLP recognises that this election is not about issues. It is about personalities, and they have resigned themselves to the view that their leader is no match to Portia in the popularity contest. Their strategy is to cut down Portia, for they feel it is futile to build up Bruce sufficiently. I understand the tactic and it is not foolish in terms of raw politics.

Golding, in my view, has been undersold. He has more strengths than even those in his party realise. The continued argument that he cannot be trusted because of his past as a garrison MP in Central St. Catherine should have no automatic bearing on his present behaviour and status.

Let us even grant that Golding was the devil that his opponents make him out to be.

Are people putting forward the view that he cannot change and that he is irredeemable? Is that an intellectually defensible position, not to mention its indisputable theological error? If we were to judge people simply by their past, how many politicians today would stand?

Also, this view that because he left the JLP to form the NDM, it means he is by personality disloyal, untrustworthy and good-for-nothing is just pure idiocy. A man who, out of conscience walked away when he was heir apparent to the throne, to form his third party rather than stay behind to undermine the leader is a man of character who should be commended. He came back at an opportune time when he saw that his ideas could be accommodated and when he had a good chance at implementing his ideas nationally.

Fickleness of electorate

If the JLP is not getting tractionsimply because its leader is not trusted or liked personally, then that says more of the fickleness of the electorate than about the character or suitability of Bruce Golding. Take the position that Golding does not have the ideas and programmes to take this country to the next level. Take the position that the PNP's ideas and programmes are superior to his and that its performance in Government justifies another term, but attacks against Golding's character based on past actions or the fact that he has a garrison constituency are arguments not worthy of any rational thinker. But elections are not about rational matters. They are about emotive issues. And demonisation works in Jamaican politics.

So the advertisers and public relations experts will have a ball in manipulating our emotions, prejudices and biases. The spin meisters will have a field day. Rational, dispassionate analysis is the first casualty in the fight for electoral power. The violence on the streets will not be compared to the intellectual violence in the media.

Portia must keep a cool head if she wants to stay ahead. One thing which will be indispensable to her is humility. She needs her loyalists around her. But perhaps more importantly, she needs independent, free-thinking people around her who can see the broad picture and who will not sanction every thought she has.

Bruce needs to be preoccupied with how he can reach that 30 per cent who after 18 years of PNP rule still can't find it in them to make him thei Only a small percentage is concerned about corruption, according to the polls, so building a whole election campaign on that is a waste. Hysterical rant about "PNP mashing up the country" will not do it either. People seem to have a different experience.

Problem is, Bruce does not have much time to come up with a winning formula.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.