Editorial | Manifestos now!

It is widely expected that Prime Minister Andrew Holness will, within a week, announce the date for the general election, for which his Government and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) have been campaigning for the better part of a year.

Jamaica, therefore, will be invited to vote in early September – before the start of the new school year – either to give Dr Holness’ Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) a third term in office, or replace them with the PNP.

But except for a vague sense that the choice is between continuity or change, Jamaicans have little clarity about what they are being asked to vote. Rather, neither party has presented a definitive vision for the country and the specific policies, strategies, programmes and plans through which it proposes to deliver on that vision over the next five years.

The Gleaner insists that the parties immediately rectify this failure. Voters deserve better. The time is already late.

It is not that the government/JLP and the PNP haven’t provided some idea of what they intend to do. Indeed, the government/JLP has largely been campaigning on its record, attempting to make the case that it has delivered on economic stability, job creation, infrastructure, social services, and, recently, public safety, with declining rates of crime.

Indeed, the administration has been very skilled, perhaps better than its predecessors, at promoting to voters over a long period, its declared successes and achievements, in what it will no doubt characterise as public service advertising and broadcasts. Additionally, in recent months ministers, especially Prime Minister Holness, have been in seeming perpetual motion, turning sod for this or that project, or cutting ribbons to start another, even sometimes when the programme appears premature. That, perhaps, is the way of election campaigning.

MISSING

What, however, is thus far missing is a single document that clearly sets all of these plans to as spell out a detailed and coherent national strategy. In other words, neither the JLP nor the PNP has yet provided voters with an election manifesto.

A government, especially one that has been in office for a better part of a decade, may find it easier to get away with such an omission. Indeed, this week government/JLP officials, including Prime Minister Holness, have been on the streets delivering to commuters a publication of the things it believes it has achieved during its tenure – a report card of sorts. Government officials say that a manifesto for the next five years will come later.

The party and the government clearly believe that they have a good argument to make to voters about the past nine years, which, if clearly heard, will dispel any unease the electorate may harbour towards the administration. So, the manifesto can wait.

Indeed, the foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, explained in a television interview on Wednesday that the perception is that manifestos remain largely unread, with little attention paid to them.

This newspaper makes three observations with respect to what some might interpret to be cynicism.

- First, no political party which is serious about government and governance, and especially one that is in opposition and without an immediate track record, can afford to entertain cynicism about the value of manifestos. They ought to be road maps for policy, in the absence of which governments soon fall victim to the tyranny of the immediate, lurching, each day, between the crises of that day.

- Moreover, even if manifestos are read by relatively few voters, they are reported on by the media as well as synthesised and made sense of by myriad analysts, whose conclusions and insights are also passed on to the electorate by the press.

- Additionally, manifestos are permanent records of promised policies and programmes, which can be checked and reviewed against performance. Which is good for governance and accountability and ought to be cherished by parties and governments which believe these characteristics are of high value to democracy and wish to win elections on the quality of their offerings rather than merely on the failures, real and perceived, of their competitors.

POLICY DOCUMENT

In that regard, it is important that the PNP, as this newspaper long ago, and more than once recommended, urgently offer voters a comprehensive policy document of the reasons why it should be Jamaica’s next government. Manifestos ought not to be so late that they are of little practical value to voters.

In the face of this repeated tardiness by Jamaica’s political parties, and in the context of The Gleaner’s advocacy of a fixed election date, we suggest that manifestos be legally mandated for registered political parties that intend to contest a general election.

As is the case with Jamaica’s campaign reporting period, which commences six months before a government’s five-year term ends, with the fixed election date political parties would be required to publish their manifestos at least three months before an election was due.