Editorial | COVID, democracy and discipline

THERE IS plenty to complain about in Jamaica, including aspects of the campaign for today’s general election. One thing, however, that ought to be cherished is the ability of citizens to choose a government in a process that is free and fair, and whose outcome reflects the will of the majority.

None of our leaders could be credibly accused of brazen attempts to undermine the electoral system, as is happening in some countries that, not long ago, were presumed to be exemplars of democracy.

That there can be confidence in Jamaican elections, and today’s vote in particular, is especially important. For, to employ a cliché which is no less fact, this election is among the island’s most crucial since its independence nearly 60 years ago. It is certainly the most significant poll since that of 1980, which served to release tensions after Jamaica came close to civil war over the ideological rifts of the 1970s.

This time, we are faced with a coronavirus pandemic that has already infected nearly 26 million people and caused nearly 860,000 deaths worldwide. Jamaica has not been spared the effect of the virus, whose spread has grown almost exponentially recently.

In the two weeks up to Tuesday, Jamaica recorded 1,532 new cases of COVID-19 for a 133 per cent increase in the overall number. Twenty-four people have died from the disease, for which no vaccine is now available, or likely to be over the medium term. Significantly, the positivity rate for the virus, that is the percentage of people confirmed as being infected with COVID-19, against those who are tested for the disease, has risen to 4.1 per cent, doubling the rate before the recent spiral in cases. The health minister, Christopher Tufton, has reprised the possibility, first postulated during the island’s early brush with the epidemic, of up to 1.5 million Jamaicans becoming infected with the virus. That, by pragmatic behaviour, can be avoided.

Globally, the primary strategy of governments for slowing the spread of COVID-19 was internal lockdowns and the closure of their international borders – with detrimental impact on the international and domestic economies. World output will fall by an estimated four per cent. Jamaica’s will slump, government analysts say, between seven and 10 per cent. It will take two to three years for the economy to return to pre-2020 levels. The recovery, however, rests in part on an assumption that Jamaica, and the world, will soon return to some form of normality.

The government that emerges from today’s exercise, therefore, will have a large and complex job that will demand many difficult choices and hard decisions. It will have to mobilise the Jamaican people, for which it will need their trust. That begins with having a legitimacy, which begins with today’s exercise. The circumstances, also, will call for leadership by example.

It is accepted that, at least for now, Jamaicans will have to live with COVID-19. The Government has to continue, insofar as possible, the reopening of the economy, including to foreign tourists – the country’s major earner of foreign exchange – even as it seeks to develop new areas of economic activity that are less susceptible to external shocks.

This needs a relatively healthy population, and a health system that is not overburdened or collapsed, if workers are to be available for productive enterprise.

Indeed, living in the new normal of COVID-19 insists on following, and enforcing, protocols that have proven their worth in moderating the spread of the disease: wearing masks in public to limit the transmission and ingestion of virus-loaded respiratory droplets; sanitising regularly; and maintaining appropriate physical distance. Which is what we expect to see being aggressively practised, and enforced, at voting precincts today.

Political leaders have greater moral authority to cause the enforcement of regulations when they are seen or believed to adhere, rather than being in breach of them, as was the case in the election campaign trail. The return to discipline by our leaders is urgent, especially those who will form the government after the poll. For it will be a difficult slog for Jamaica to stabilise itself and thrive in this new environment.