Daniel Thwaites | Pitfalls and high points of Election 2020

You really have to give up some applause to Andrew Holness and his team for the stunning victory they just engineered.

How to adequately describe this monumental shellacking of the PNP? It’s not enough to say that the voters chose the JLP. More accurately, the voters chose the JLP and rejected the PNP with a forceful, unambiguous, nationwide denunciation.

After a loss, we will hear that “the party will have to rebuild, etc.”. But such bromides hardly capture what’s necessary here. Because this was no ordinary spanking.

The curious thing is that almost everyone saw it coming. Poll after poll highlighted the steep valley the PNP was in. The by-election trouncing in South East St Mary signalled that something was deeply amiss, and another by-election in Eastern Portland saw the humiliating end of decades of PNP representation.

The general election of September 3, 2020 was, in some sense, a mere expansion of the Eastern Portland experience. Action Ann was the hors d’oeuvres and this is the entrée.

NO TITANIC SAILING

So this was no Titanic sailing on a smooth ocean before bumping into a submerged mountain. No, the grand dimensions of this iceberg had been exhaustively documented. And yet the captain and crew steamed along.

In fact, it goes further. Lookouts atop the main mast sighted the approaching hazard and it precipitated a mutiny. That was the Rise United effort whose basic claim has now been empirically and emphatically verified.

Then the terrible news broke that the party’s leader had been diagnosed with cancer, had had an operation, and would be undergoing curative chemotherapy.

This was the trickiest intrusion of all. While every decent person felt sorrow, it also had an undeniable and unpleasant political dimension. For whether by conscious decision or unconscious default, many voters hesitate to invest leadership in one who they feel has a major health impairment.

And yet the PNP forged ahead with a grim determination that can only be called foolhardy.

Institutions can be deliberately and systematically blind and ‘groupthink’ is a very real phenomenon. The Gleaner’s story ‘Comrades weep’ delves into “how PNP had brushed aside three national polls which indicated that the party was trailing badly the JLP”. Vice-president Paulwell said:

“The polls that we did, for example, North Trelawny, saw us winning by 18 points.”

This is wish fulfilment and magical thinking, not a sustainable strategy, and not likely to survive too much contact with reality.

FIX BENT HEARTS

More broadly, institutional structures can be so wooden and inflexible that necessary changes are delayed till there is cataclysm. It is at least arguable that each PNP president has stayed for one election too long, and that should concern the godfathers of the organisation and shapers of its constitution.

But in my view it goes further than all that, for there is nothing that can straighten what is bent in the human heart.

Unfortunately, a lot of very astute politicians saw the writing on the wall, but calculated that it was better to lose than allow a rival to ascend to the leadership.

Which is to say that even more dreadful than the oft-decried ‘disunity’ is the wrong kind of superficial unity wherein El Comandante’s top four or five lieutenants are merely storing up gunpowder for a future fight against each other.

Partly, that is all, as they say, ‘politics’. However it can reach unhealthy extremes.

But, hey, it also proves that if you collectively strive for a result, you stand a pretty good chance of achieving it. Turning to the election itself, it’s worth noting that the turnout was a mere 37 per cent, the lowest for a contested election in the country’s history.

It was so low that Mr Holness paused to take note of it in his acceptance/victory speech without quite acknowledging that the decision to call an election in the height of a pandemic – which was solely his – will also stain the memory of this particular process. The timing was decidedly to his advantage, but as COVID-19 cases surge, the public will determine if it was also to the country’s benefit.

Anyhow, I don’t feel qualified to conclude that it wasn’t worth it. If a rollicking good party is worth the risk of massive COVID-19 spread, why should a national election have a lesser status?

BETTER PARTS

So now to the better parts.

First off, Mr Holness gave a fantastic victory speech. What struck me was his conciliatory words and his mature approach. He spoke extemporaneously but with the evident command of one whose job now fits like a tailored suit.

This part jumped out at me:

“I raise this in my acceptance (and I don’t call this a victory speech) because with such a large mandate it brings a whole new dynamic as to how we manage government. In our last government the narrative of corruption dogged us … and it is not something we can hide away from.”

Here Holness connects his sizeable margin to his ability to manage allegations of corruption, signalling that with the enhanced elbow room he can do more. That’s an unusually frank statement, and, I believe, true.

Then again, let’s not forget that a large win delivers its own stresses, because our flawed system sets up representatives to angle after jobs in the executive (Cabinet). For many – I would say almost all – it’s their deepest desire.

But Mr Holness only has so many spoonfuls of porridge to dole out to the jubilant but hungry supplicants. The older, long-time warriors will feel entitled, and not without some justification. But equally, the younger newcomers will feel that it’s their turn to drive.

Mr Holness has an enormous mandate, an expanded team full of diverse talents, and has begun by expressing some noble sentiments and great intentions. I feel the whole country is entitled to a measured optimism, even in the face of the inevitable economic fallout from COVID-19.

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com