Ian Boyne
The Brian Meeks appraisal report on the People's National Party's electoral loss confirms that party disunity, the Trafigura scandal, disastrous election timing, lacklustre enumeration efforts, loss of the leaders debate and weak leadership combined to send the party packing after 18 years.
"Trafigura had devastating consequences for the party and led to rapid decline in popular support," the Meeks report said. Trafigura made it suicidal to call the election in 2006.
The first colossal mistake made by the party leader was not to have called the elections a few months after the presidential race. Yes, the wounds were still wide open in the aftermath of a bitter and acrimonious presidential race, and the issue of candidate selection in a fractious environment was a major constraining issue, but the party should have found the collective will to deal quickly with those internal problems and prepare itself to defeat the Jamaica Labour Party.
That opportunity was squandered and it was not just the fault of the leader. The party leadership as a whole must take responsibility for failing to find the means - however much the skilful negotiation and compromise it would have demanded - to unify the party to face a re-energised and heavily funded JLP.
Weaknesses
Simpson Miller, Phillips and Meeks
The disunity in the PNP and certain weaknesses in the leadership form part of the pivotal reasons why the PNP lost the elections. The report puts it delicately but profoundly: "for Simpson Miller's leadership to be a success, it requires compromises on all sides and for everyone to put the interests of the party first. This is the only approach that will help to avoid a long period in the political wilderness".
But if those compromises were made early and the party's interests were put ahead of egos, Portia Simpson Miller could well be in Jamaica House today. Don't overlook the fact that despite 18 years in office and a number of scandals to its credit, the PNP came very close to winning the 2007 elections. Fewer than 3,000 votes and just two seats kept the PNP out of Jamaica House.
Why so close
Which the Meeks report comments rightly is "remarkable and ran counter to the views of many of the pundits in the days preceding the vote". Indeed, "why did the JLP, with all the money, media and the powerful slogan 'Time for a Change', come so close to losing after 18 years out of power?" Part of the reason is the natural support for the PNP in Jamaica. The 'PNP country' narrative, which has not been frowned on by even the seasoned political campaigner Edward Seaga, must be taken seriously.
For with so much working against the PNP, including the onerous weight of incumbency and in face of a brilliant media and advertising campaign by the JLP, for the PNP to have done so well makes urgent this appraisal report.
But even with the disunity issue, which the Comrades agreed played a major part in the defeat, if the election had been called earlier in 2007, the PNP would very likely have won.
The PNP leader made an impressive budget presentation and seemed to have recaptured the hearts of many Jamaicans. And the JLP presentations in the budget debate were not impressive, with JLP leader Golding's budget presentation being below the quality of the previous year. Portia was on a roll. Common sense would have dictated an early election call. But perhaps jaded by religious fundamentalism and the magic of the Sevens, she delayed.
Says the Meeks Report: "There is broad perception, perhaps consensus, that the timing of the election played a major role in the defeat."
The Meeks Report was on target: "The August 27 date made the campaign too long, deflated the comrades, put more stress on an exhausted organisation, ... gave them (the JLP) more time to decimate the PNP with their media campaign, conflicted with established back-to-school traditions and opened up the possibility of a hurricane, which did come." The election timing was catastrophic. The PNP is lucky they were not wiped out.
The Meeks Report reinforces the other PNP disaster we are all in consensus on: The unmitigated tragedy of its advertising campaign which must be the most inept and amateurish in the history of advertising campaigns of any sort anywhere. And this faced with the sheer genius of the JLP advertising and media campaign. The PNP made some recovery only in the last couple of weeks before the elections.
Party divisions
But it was the party divisions which contributed to that advertising campaign wreck. Had the traditional PNP public relations people been involved, the disaster could have been avoided.
The Meeks Report says "greater research will have to be done to explain why the private sector deserted the party in large numbers, despite being the collective beneficiary of so many programmes and enjoying over a decade of sustained profitability brought by the deregulation of the economy and macroeconomic stability". This is one of the few examples of naivety and class-blindness exhibited in the report. That it could come from someone like Professor Meeks who is schooled in Marxist sociology and philosophy is surprising. Except that he has succumbed to the usual ritual of throwing out the baby with the bath water in renouncing his former Marxist ideology.
The fact is that, while Karl Marx was wrong on economics and naíve in his anthropology, he was dead right in his sociology. Marxian analysis of class has not been falsified. It has stood the test of time. It is unfashionable and even risky to raise issues of class in Jamaica for our intelligentsia will rain fire on our heads if we do. But I am not pandering to popular sentiment and ignorance.
Despite the neoliberal, Washington Consensus policies of Omar Davies and the PNP, which is the same framework the JLP has to follow, the private sector and the ruling class were not comfortable with Portia Simpson Miller. And some of her own weaknesses exacerbated the class stand-off.
Renegade son
The private sector deserted Michael Manley in the '70s when he was using socialist rhetoric and talking about the poor. But at least the ruling class felt that Michael was one of their own. He was just a renegade son, someone who lost his way because he went to LSE and read too many books. Portia they see as "not coming from anywhere" and having no affinity to books. So the usual class aversion was mixed with contempt.
That Portia did not feel it necessary to 'suck up' to certain of the Big Boys in the private sector; that she did not really socialise with them or gave them the deference they are accustomed to by Jamaican politicians did not help her at all. The ruling class and the private sector would have been more comfortable with Peter Phillips, even if Phillips were using socialist rhetoric. The PNP would have had greater funding under a Phillips.
'Pedigree' peter
Peter Bunting would get more funding because private sector people believe he has 'pedigree'. These are indelicate things to raise in our hypocritical society, but if you believe that these factors are of the past, enjoy your fantasy.
If the PNP is to be resurgent, it will have to find a way to negotiate the class issues and win back the confidence of important elements in the ruling class. Portia would have to engage them skilfully. They have important mass organs like newspapers and they can influence public opinion. It makes no sense just sitting down at PNP headquarters cussing them. You had better find a way to engage them and make them feel less threatened. Unless the power elite in Jamaica is re-engaged, the PNP will be out for a long time. It is not enough to engage the masses, Portia needs to understand, you have to engage the people who influence the masses and whose actions can turn the masses against you.
The Meeks Report rightly talks about the importance of the PNP having a distinct philosophy, an ideology, a transcendent purpose. Excellent thoughts there.
But the appraisal report fails unforgivably to look at the strengths of th to the PNP - the ruling JLP. The report unwittingly continues the PNP tradition of underestimating Bruce Golding, which I have always warned the PNP about.
No appraisal of the PNP defeat is incomplete without reckoning with the considerable strengths of Bruce Golding, whose story of uniting and re-energising the JLP after years in the wilderness has yet to be adequately analysed. The PNP has always underestimated Golding's rapport with people, his ability to touch the pulse of the people and to resonate with the issues which concern them.
Strengthening the voice
The Golding who hosted so compassionately and so calmly 'Jamaica House Live' on Wednesday night, chatting easily and colloquially to country people and senior citizens with middle-class inflections, is not a politician to underrate. Golding has effectively positioned himself as the man on the vanguard of change. He is liberalising libel laws to empower the press (and further endear himself to its owners); he is overseeing the crafting of legislation to tackle corruption and abuse of public office; to reduce abuses in the police force and he is strengthening the voice of the Opposition and has already come up with a $500 million package to cushion prices increases for the poor. He has captured the hearts of two powerful lobbies in Jamaica - the human rights lobby and the environmental lobby. You might soon have John Maxwell lionising him in his columns!
He is liked by the power elite, seen as intellectually competent and is marketing himself as the compassionate, accessible down-to-earth leader. Golding embodies middle-class values. The PNP has to stop counting on Golding's past in Central St Catherine if it is to have any future.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
