Peter Espeut | An election-averse administration

After their postponement in February this year (after previously being postponed in 2020 and 2022), the local government elections are now due by February 2024. The given reason why they were postponed this year – the COVID-19 pandemic – is not credible; the general election of 2020 was held at the height of the pandemic, which was well on the wane by February 2023.

No! The real reason Prime Minister Holness decided to avoid a local government election in February 2023 [and (until now) needed by-elections] was the real possibility that his party might lose it, and demoralise his party workers before the general election due by 2025! In 2022 the popularity of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government had begun to slip in opinion polls, and an optimistic Andrew Holness felt it was prudent to postpone (again) for another year, hoping that their position might improve.

He may yet regret that decision. Recent opinion poll results indicate further slippage in the popularity of the scandal-ridden Holness government, due as well to outrage at the unconscionable salary increases they gave themselves while forcing the civil service to hold strain. The JLP was in a better position in February 2023 than now.

Some think that PM Holness will call the election next month (November 2023); that now looks unlikely. At the very least, the South Coast Highway Improvement Project (SCHIP) running from Bull Bay to Port Antonio – suffering year-long delays and cost overruns – was rescheduled to be completed in August 2023. The hope was that the personal inconvenience suffered by thousands of voters and the loss of income by scores of small businesses along the way would have been forgotten in the euphoria of a spanking new four-lane “cyah-pet”. August came and went; September came and went; and October is almost over and no end to the highway construction is in sight.

UNCONSCIONABLY SILENT

And what is worse, the government has been unconscionably silent about when we can expect the inconvenience to end. (I must declare interest: I live in the area).

One end of the SCHIP highway is in the constituency of the wife of the prime minister, the newly minted Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament. Her councillors in the area are likely to lose their seats, and so might she in 2025. With the SCHIP highway incomplete, and the sour taste in the mouths of constituents, it is unlikely that local government elections will be called next month. That shifts the focus to January or February 2024, as Christmas elections are unlikely.

Might PM Holness postpone local government elections again? Even though he has publicly declared that he won’t, he can find some other lame excuse. The last thing the Holness government wants is a local government loss a year before general election.

This scenario is the perfect argument for entrenching municipal government in Jamaica’s constitution, with a fixed date for local government elections. Our monarchical prime minister possesses more power over Jamaican elections than the US president has over US elections – indeed more power than the UK prime minister has over UK elections (the UK adopted a fixed election date in 2011). The power to call elections when the PM believes it is to his advantage is unfair to opposition parties, and could very well frustrate the will of the Jamaican people.

But the co-chair of the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) is fixated on replacing the British Monarch as Jamaica’s Head of State, and repatriating our constitution, to the exclusion of everything else. Her stated plan was to have tabled a bill to thus amend the constitution five months ago with no public education or public consultation, so the required referendum could be held before the next general election.

And recently the CRC announced that they wish to widen the circumstances under which general elections could be postponed for up to two years.

I believe the election-averse Holness administration wishes that they had that power now!

But the government’s plans to amend Jamaica’s constitution have all but stalled. No public education is taking place, and the “town halls” they have been keeping (of course they mean “town hall meetings”, but as Jamaica has no town halls like in the USA, it is a malapropism of an Americanism) these so-called “town halls” held to advertise their intentions are not the same thing as public consultations.

The CRC – or maybe really the co-chair – has botched the constitutional reform process, which will not help the Holness administration win the next election.

Can the government give us a new revised date for when the Harbour View to Port Antonio SCHIP Highway will be complete?

REALLY COMPLETE

And I mean really complete. To save face, the Rio Minho to Williamsfield leg of the East-West Toll Road was officially declared open before highway construction was complete, which is why they cannot yet collect any toll fees.

Do they know when the SCHIP Highway will be complete? It seems to me that the scope of work continues to expand, or they have phased the work badly. What project management software are they using? And who is administering it?

Every day we are shunted to drive on different sections, sometimes paved, sometimes signage is poor, and at nights (with no lighted signs) one has to be extra careful. Traffic jams are a daily travail. How long, Lord?

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com