Jamaica’s elections seemed to have stunned most observers, including the majority of those polling in the country. What was predicted as likely to be a narrowly won election by either party, turned into a rout (41-22 seats) by the Peoples National Party (PNP) under Mrs Portia Simpson-Miller. In the course of the campaign, Portia Simpson (as she is commonly referred to in Jamaica) was much reviled by opposition advertisements as not up to the task of governance, and even looked askance by some in her own party whose traditions, since Norman Manley’s day, suggest leadership by the intellectual class. But she ended up demonstrating that support for her was strong where it mattered – among the working class and among a middle class frustrated by the difficulties which they have been experiencing over too many years of deprivation and lack of personal economic progress.
And yet it is difficult to be too certain about what the election result means. For in a country in which in the last general elections of 2007 a little over sixty per cent of those eligible to vote cast their ballots, in this election a little under fifty per cent of them voted. This suggests a certain apathy, and more than that a degree of alienation and doubt as to whether either party in Jamaica is capable of fulfilling popular expectations in a country experiencing grave economic difficulty for the better part of thirty years since Michael Manley first approached the IMF in 1976. This period has seen a long stretch of governance by both the PNP and the Jamaica Labour Party – both parties led in turn by persons held in high repute by the population at large – Manley himself, Edward Seaga, P J Patterson, and then Bruce Golding of a younger generation.
The election results of September 2007 had indicated a certain wariness on the part of the population about the ability of the long-ruling PNP to come to terms with persistent economic recession in Jamaica, as well as with continually burgeoning crime substantially rooted in Jamaica’s reputation as a major source of narcotics transmission to North America and Britain. With a relatively narrow 32-28 victory out of then 60 seats, Golding’s administration made a decisive attempt to find an economic strategy agreeable to the IMF which could pull the country out of the economic morass which the PNP seemed to be unable to deal with. Primary among the difficulties has been the persistent growth of debt, even in the face of severe austerity measures that have left large numbers with a strong sense of personal deprivation. Yet, after plaudits for coming to a modus vivendi with the IMF, economic growth has largely eluded the country, substantial debt reduction has remained elusive, with an apparently attractive tourism industry having to struggle hard against the recessions during this decade in both the United States and Europe. So Bruce Golding, even if he had survived the Dudus affair, would have had a difficult time achieving a strong victory in the general elections; and when Dudus was added to the country’s other problems, he was seen to have handed his successor Andrew Holness a veritable poisoned chalice.
From the perspective of the Jamaican electorate, the Dudus affair had brought a stain on Jamaica which would have been hard to bear at the best of times. That electorate has long prided itself on maintaining good relations with the United States, as Michael Manley found to his party’s detriment when relations turned sour in the 1970s. It can be assumed that the huge Jamaican diaspora there would have had some influence on the sentiments of the voters, to which they would have added their own belief that Golding had failed to maintain his own party’s record as the party of good relations with the US. His tactic of seeking to erase negative sentiment by proposing a young and unstained (so to speak) Holness to face the electorate seems not to have been persuasive. And in addition, the electorate seemed to conclude that both candidates, at least in their public television debates, seemed to be lacklustre and not particularly attractive as policy presenters. Such a conclusion would have played more against Holness, presented as the new rising star, than against Simpson, whose weaknesses as a policy expositor has been well known to the electorate.
The JLP’s public image came also in the middle of the campaign to be affected by new allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Works, whose head, Mike Henry, was also the party’s campaign manager. In the 2007 election campaign anti-PNP corruption allegations by the JLP seemed to have had for them an effect on the result. Now the PNP had a similar weapon. And the fact that Henry resigned from the ministry but not from the position of campaign manager was of no help to the party, seeming only to allow the electorate to at best take a “plague on both your houses” approach to the corruption issue – neutralizing its anti-PNP effect.
What, as far as the economy is concerned, Portia Simpson can do now, that the JLP has not already been attempting to do, is an open question. It is the same IMF which has to be faced in a situation perhaps just as serious as it was in 2007. Portia Simpson will be hoping that the American recession bottoms out over the earlier part of this year, giving a breathing space for a tourism industry on whose regeneration much effort has been expended by both administrations in recent years. The Prime Minister, one suspects, however, can perhaps not depend on a similar revival of the British economy, though expansion of efforts to the wider European continent, notably Germany, can possibly pay off in some measure. But from a popular point of view, the electorate will be satisfied with a PNP performance to the extent that the oher aspects of the economy are seen to pick up, spreading financial resources beyond the traditional foreign exchange earners.
The PNP victory has been welcomed by the rest of the region, and particularly by those governments now representing what are referred to as “sister parties” of the PNP. The apparent hope is that the PNP will be more favourable to taking measures to advance the Caricom Single Market and Economy, with the traditional JLP anti-regionalism bogey not having the salience that it has had in the past. Jamaican entrepreneurs, of whatever political colour, have for some time now been particularly aggrieved by what they claim to be an anti-developmental Caricom bias as far as their country is concerned, this referring to the lower costs of energy as a factor in the production process in Trinidad & Tobago. They argue for some equity in that regard, in order to allow a revival of the once vigorous Jamaican manufacturing sector. How the new government approaches the issue, and whether it feels, after a while, that progress can, or cannot be made, will be a significant pointer to the future of the CSME.
All Caricom citizens, however, will be anxious to see a major member of our regional movement come out of the morass in which it has found itself for too long. Regional consensus on greater harmonization of trade and production policy, leading to increasing complementarity of the economies of the region, especially the larger ones, will be an important pointer to the future of our region as an economic entity.
