Orville Taylor | ‘All I want for Christmas is neither J nor P’

The Gospel of Luke has a story about a series of events that took place around 2,023 years ago. Yet incomplete, a census was being undertaken to see what the numbers of citizens in the empire looked like. Just eight years earlier, the Emperor Caesar Augustus had shown such complete control, as with his great-uncle Julius, that he renamed Sextilis, the sixth month after himself. Back in 45 BCE, a year before he was assassinated, Julius has changed the fifth month from Quintilis to July.

Numbers matter when one is seeking or trying to hold on to political power, and it is important to have the majority behind the leader, if he wants to govern successfully. Perhaps, it might not have been December and thus, the shepherds were not cold as one thought. However, given pollster Don Anderson’s numbers we might now understand what ‘lukewarm’ truly means.

Carefree celebrants of Christmas might not be careless. Yet, they couldn’t care less about going to the polls soon. Anderson has revealed that 37 per cent of eligible voters indicated that they would not be voting for either the People’s National Party (PNP) or the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the next local government elections.

Jamaican voters typically vote for the heads of the political party, and interestingly, both are biblically named. Andrew, brother of Peter, the disciple (apostle) was born in North Africa and crucified on a lopsided cross, which formed an ‘X’. Mark was the disciple whose mother owned the Cenacle, where the Last Supper was held, and he brought water to Jesus. He was hanged and dragged through the streets until dead.

Thank God that we are in a different dispensation where contending views thrive, and any demise by the mark of the X is merely failure to attain or maintain political power. Elections are due within two weeks of Valentine’s Day in 2024.

RIGHTLY UNBOTHERED

Undaunted by the apathy, JLP chairman, Dr Horace Chang, is rightly unbothered by the generally very accurate Anderson polls. For him, if large numbers of supporters turn up for party conferences, there is a great likelihood that it will to win the next election. However, there are indeed times when as many as 150,000 strong can be wrong. To be brutally honest though, where voter sentiments are relatively equally divided, the real difference in a country like Jamaica is which party has more resources to get people out on election day. When it comes to mobilising voters, there is no question that the incumbent has an advantage.

Given that the prime minister is the one person who can determine when an election day it to be set; he would be stupid to have this weaponry and not use it in a fight. After all, why would someone have doubts as to whether or not his opponent brandishing a ratchet knife can defeat him, then sheathes his two-sided ‘panya’ machete, which give him an advantage? Let us be brutally honest here! Governments have kept this privilege to themselves, as repulsive as it might be in a democracy. Nevertheless, the law is the law and both of our political parties have given hours of lip service to the call for fixed election days, but never seem concerned enough to treat it as a priority, until of course, they lose the next election and clang like voices in the wilderness.

More than 70 per cent of Jamaican voters have a preference for fixed election dates. In a democracy this certainly prevents the incumbent party from ‘colting the game’ and violating the will of the people. Prime Minister Edward Seaga, 40 years ago, calling the bluff of Michael Manley, then leader of the opposition, who demanded the resignation of the finance minister, who happened to be the prime minister at the time, called a snap election. And in perhaps the silliest move by Manley, the PNP boycotted the election and could easily have opened the door to a massive rape of our entire democracy and the unilateral rewriting of the Constitution. Thankfully, that did not happen.

NOT GRASPED

Funny, despite the harsh lessons learned from six years of exclusion from the House named after George Gordon, the opportunity was not grasped by a PNP government, that not only had the imagination and love of the working class, but importantly, the middle non-aligned voters who actually win elections had totally fallen out of love with Seaga after the general strike of 1985.

What I would love to find under my Christmas tree tomorrow morning is a bipartisan agreement that the next local government elections will be the last conducted using a flexible date which can be called on the whim or fancy of the prime minister.

Like National Hero Marcus Garvey, I want low corruption and high democracy, consistent with his 1929 manifesto, proposing a “a law for the imprisonment of any person who by duress or undue influence would force another person to vote in any public election against his/her will, because of an obligation, employment or otherwise.”

We need full disclosure for those who give make campaign donations more than $250,000. This is not a minor position; 44 per cent of us want that. Wrap it in orange and green paper, and put it under my tree too.

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, happy Kwanzaa! Peace be unto the prophets, Natal Mubarak, Happy Bada Din, season’s greetings.

Jah Jah liveth every time.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.