Mark Wignall | Can Holness recapture his glow?

In a parliamentary democracy like Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness draws on him being a vote-gathering avatar. But this must be adequately paired with, or driven by, successful government policy, promises of better ones to come, while dealing with the day-to-day management of the society.

A major plank in the daily management of Jamaica must be the prime minister mixing up a special brew to implant more than a spurious belief that our security is not under threat. After that, his absolutely best self must show up to convince those under 30 that the Government is devising policies to ensure that the people’s alienation from the State will see significant declines in the next five years. 2030 is almost on our doorstep.

On the first count, him pulling votes to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), that is not working true to form. If on the policy front special communication channels must be employed to convey any policy successes to ‘the people’, it could mean that the effectiveness of such policies has not brought any positive outcomes to ‘the people.’

But if, for example, the Government enters into a government-big-business partnership to upgrade an airport, it doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of our people do not travel, and so that success may simply fly over the heads of ‘the people.’

The prime minister and his key ministers and political strategists must be taken up by the possibility or likelihood that the tide has turned in favour of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP).

If another public opinion poll is conducted in another month or so and the JLP and its leader are found to be getting used to a new dose of political reality, they may as well turn on the money spigot, do crassly political, let the election spandooliks run wild in key weathervane constituencies, and hope that a good mix of desperation and blind faith can provide a whisker-thin finish.

The JLP has kept our fiscal health in somewhat sound and safe territory. Even though international economic policy positions are now being affected by the bloody conflict in Russia-Ukraine, we are told that Jamaica is, so far, dodging that bullet. That said, the war of words growing between China and the US is likely to increase as China sees an opportunistic moment to use the Russia-Ukraine conflict as the perfect time to one-up the Biden Whitehouse. There are likely to be economic storm winds from that in the short and medium term.

The JLP needs to remind itself that it has no one else to blame but itself for its recent acting as if it were in Opposition. It has its policies laid out, and if ‘the people’ were in constant touch with them, it would not have to act as opposition, throwing empty promises in the wind. That slippage may assist it to a needed second wind.

That is if actual political panic has not already set in.

NICE TOUCH, DR DAWES

I would, without fear that I could be digging at anything racially indelicate, declare it as my personal view that Dr Alfred Dawes comes from good stock. As laid out in the Jamaica Observer, “Alfred Dawes, popular medical doctor seeking to be the People’s National Party (PNP) candidate for St Catherine South Eastern in the general election due 2025, on Tuesday, during the launch of his political bid, pronounced dead the campaign of his rival, Alric Campbell.”

At the launch, held in the Portmore community of Waterford, Dr Dawes — a general, laparoscopic and bariatric surgeon by profession — armed with a stethoscope around his neck, said: “It is incumbent on me as a medical doctor, registered in Jamaica, having found no signs of life in the campaign, no heartbeat of the people, no breath of fresh air, on April 11, at 9:45 p.m., I pronounce the other campaign dead.”

I have always said, and most of you know that internal party rivalry can be even more bitter that the usual JLP/PNP election contests, but in this instance, the stethoscope, the ‘medical examination’, and pronouncement of death of his rival’s campaign was a good touch. Altogether this was a classic and in bitingly good taste.

Dr Dawes does not strike me as overcharged on a big dose of egomania. Again from the Observer. “When they ask why a doctor is doing politics, I ask you why not, when we live in a sick society that is bawling out for help. Listen to the murders today and yesterday alone. I have pronounced dead too many future lawyers, doctors, nurses, and leaders in the operating theatre as a result of crime and violence. I could not save them on my operating table; therefore, I must try to save them from the streets. Maybe politics is the way for me to show them that there is another way to make a life and the way to get the Government of the day to understand that the key to solving our crime problem is not states of public emergencies, but the state of our communities.”’

ABORTION, BUGGERY LAW ARE ELECTION LOSERS

As a male of the human species, I can well understand that many among us enjoy the beautiful luxury of hypocrisy when the matter of abortion is being discussed. Men who have had some fair successes socially and economically are men often driven by power-induced testosterone streaks.

If the local ‘abortion doctors’ were ever to talk, I feel certain that many men in the political arena would have their names being mentioned dishonourably. In public, they would never even allow that evil word to pass across their lips, but in private, cash is withdrawn from the ATM, and no names are invoked.

To understand the same hypocrisy exists in the dense confines of inner-city communities. Many young women there find that two or three men have to be shaken down to fund one abortion. And yet when many women there are in the throes of a daily or weekly war, one of the worst things that one woman can use to cuss her neighbour with is to accuse her of ‘dashing weh belly’.

As for removing the buggery law, that is deader than dead, politically.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.