Editorial | Spotlight on candidates

This newspaper is in the habit of quoting the maxim of the late Anguillan-Antiguan attorney, Bernice Lake, on what aspiring politicians must be willing to accept when they seek citizens’ votes in their bid for public office.

They cannot, and should not presume the same level of privacy as ordinary folk who do not offer themselves for such positions of power, and ask for the right to control state resources and influence over people’s lives. Neither should political parties under whose umbrellas most candidates contest elections.

Or, as Ms Lake put it at a conference in Kingston in the early 2000s, concerning the level of protection politicians should enjoy against defamation: “When he throws his hat in the national arena, the politician does so on the basis of an implied promise to promote and protect free speech in the social interest of honest, open and accountable government. He does so with the concomitant subordination of the right to privacy.

“Upon the assumption of office, he makes that promise expressly.”

It is against that backdrop, and in the context of the general election – which, constitutionally, must take place before this year’s end – that The Gleaner urges the island’s primary political parties (the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP)) to urgently inform voters of the criteria they have used, or will use, in choosing candidates, including the weight applied to each objective in the selection process. How integrity ranks in this regime, and the testing methodologies to determine the suitability of candidates on this score, deserve special attention from the parties in their public responses on these matters.

Indeed, the JLP and the PNP have a profoundly moral and ethical obligation to be fulsome and transparent on the question.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

The point is, most politicians who contest elections do so under the umbrella of political parties, whose explicit intent is to gain State power – which includes control over the State’s vast resources, its coercive power, and its influence over the citizens’ lives. They generally pledge to apply these powers to public good.

In this regard, The Gleaner reiterates a number of fundamental principles and observations, which should help to inform the thinking of the parties on this subject, not least of which is the Bernice Lake precept. But beyond seeking honest candidates as a philosophical ideal, is the raw fact that Jamaicans believe that they live in a country mired in corruption and distrust public officials, especially politicians.

Political parties cannot, therefore, pretend to be private clubs, accountable only to their paid-up members. Indeed, they implicitly accept as much in acquiescing to legislation that requires them to register with the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, which affords them privileges in contesting elections.

Unfortunately, the demands on the parties under that law, with respect to transparency and public accountability, is not particularly robust.

Nonetheless, the parties owe voters information that should help them analyse the competence of candidates, and the basis on which they were chosen, other than their perceived popularity and/or pre-election, campaigning generosity.

There is, too, the matter of corruption in Jamaica, or the perception thereof. Do the parties have functioning integrity committees that seriously vet candidates?

TRANSPARENCY IN SELECTION PROCESS

As Vanderbilt’s University’s LAPOP research laboratory’s 2023 biennial survey on democracy in the Americas reconfirmed, nearly nine in 10 Jamaicans (86 per cent) believe they live in a corrupt country. Although the figure has drifted upwards, the statistic aligns with the findings of other surveys over several years.

The numbers may be halved from recent years, but the latest LAPOP survey found that over a quarter of Jamaicans would tolerate a coup, especially if it were aimed at fighting corruption.

Generally, Jamaicans do not trust their institutions, and more so politicians, who two-thirds (66 per cent) brand as the most corrupt of the country’s governing/bureaucratic elite.

Consistently, surveys show that the majority of citizens do not trust Parliament; do not believe the courts can deliver justice; and are wary of the police, who, nonetheless, have been surpassed by politicians as the group in which people have least faith.

The upshot of this distrust in the institutions of the State is declining support of, and belief in, the ability of democracy as being capable of delivering good to the society.

In that 2023 LAPOP survey, 53 per cent of Jamaicans said that democracy was the best form of government, down four percentage points from three years earlier. However, two decades ago, 79 per cent hailed democracy as the best form of government. Even beyond the decline in the broad support for democracy as a form of government, a mere 28 per cent of Jamaicans believed that it delivered for the country.

This absence of trust in politicians and the institutions of the State, especially people’s concerns over corruption, no doubt helps to explain declining voter participation in the island’s elections. Indeed, only 37 per cent of the registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 general election.

The island’s political parties have to do everything in their power to halt the rot, if they are committed to democracy as the best form of government. They can start by assuring voters of the worth, and trustworthiness, of the candidates they have chosen for this year’s election– by being transparent about their selection process.