Conscientious opposition

Robert Buddan, Contributor

The People's National Party (PNP) is holding its 72nd annual conference this weekend. Its theme is 'restoring the hope'. It will tell us how it intends to do so through its new progressive agenda.

As the PNP gathers its force, the rot in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) spreads. The Golding-Brady quarrel has caused the party to call emergency meetings. Portia Simpson Miller is firmly in charge of her party. Golding is fighting to maintain control of his.

The business of opposition can be easy. It can mean obstructing anything and virtually everything government does. It can simply charge government with lying, corruption, mismanagement and failure, and call for it to resign. It can be about blocking roads, abandoning co-operation, and destabilising the economy and society. It can play on the fears of people, and there are always fears. It can feed their biases and there are always those as well. It can be entirely negative.

Positive opposition

Is there such a thing as positive opposition? The PNP has charged the government with lying, corruption, mismanagement and failure, and called for the prime minister to resign. Based on what has happened over the past year, one could not fault it. Broad civil-society organisations have done the same, independent of and without the prompting of the PNP. The Coke-Manatt saga, still ongoing, has given more than enough cause for this. But the PNP has not done any of the other things.

In fact, over the past year, its position has been to oppose within and with respect for the law. It has kept its opposition in Parliament. There, it has debated the Budget, the GOJ-International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) letter of intent, the Jamaica Debt Exchange, and the Manatt exposure. It has voted on the crime bills, the state of emergency and two censure motions. It has used parliamentary question time for asking about Manatt and asking for emails between the Government and Manatt. It has introduced censure motions against the prime minister and the minister of justice.

At the same time, it has resisted tremendous pressure to take to the streets. On only one occasion did it organise islandwide protests and that was in December last after the massive surprise pre-IMF tax package of almost $22 billion. Those protests were peaceful and did not disrupt traffic or daily life. The youth arm has held other protests and vigils, but none was disruptive. All this despite the fact that at critical times people have been ready to block roads and have called in to the party and leader of the opposition's offices, saying all they wanted was for the opposition leader, Portia Simpson Miller, to just give the word.

Opposition politics is changing in Jamaica. It has been peaceful and parliamentarist. A new language of opposition is also now emerging. Just last week, The Sunday Observer produced an editorial about Sergeant Raymond Wilson's outspoken statement against government's supposed self-serving crime fighting, while failing to fairly compensate the nation's crime fighters. That editorial used words such as "civil disobedience", and justified it. It spoke of the sergeant's right to speak his conscience, raising grounds of conscientious objection. In an update on Jamaica, The Economist used the word 'dissent' in saying dissent was growing among the police.

When language like this starts to emerge and a government begins to lose the confidence of critical pillars of power such as the media and the police, and even act in ways to drive them into opposition, then it is contributing to a new kind of opposition and a new face of the opposition. Take The Gleaner. Bruce Golding charged or insinuated that Oliver Clarke, the managing director of The Gleaner Company, is part of a propaganda effort with a political agenda against the Government because The Gleaner exposed emails suggesting that his Government had not been truthful about the Manatt matter.

Media important

The media are an important part of business in Jamaica. They are not just opinion setters. When other important business voices begin to sound unhappy about the state of the country, the face and nature of the opposition changes even more. The same Economist article quotes Gordon 'Butch' Stewart as saying, "A small man starting a business cannot succeed, unless he is willing to play all sorts of games." Stewart had also recently put down the minister of tourism for boasting about arrivals without knowing what was going on in the operations side of the tourism industry.

The party is the most critical pillar of power for a government. The police, the media and the business community are important bases of power in any society. The JLP is turning on itself and division is spreading. Granted, the business community is divided politically. But its organisations are on record as wanting the truth about the Manatt affair, and some of their members believe Golding should resign. They have withdrawn from the partnership for transformation of the public sector, saying it could not be business as usual.

There are other sectors that are disgruntled - students, the Church, teachers, nurses, consumers, public-sector managers and workers. Their opposition is not about class, race or ideology. It is about a combination of material values - salaries, job security, cost of living and lack of opportunity to start a business. It is also, however, about post-material values - truth, trust, respect, and fairness. People are angry at how government treats them. They feel an indignity in these hard times in a society that is very sensitive to status and social mobility.

What is different about the growing opposition are the kinds of interest, class or client groups that are speaking out (police, media, business, not just nurses and teachers), the language being used to justify their opposition on civic and conscientious grounds with positive descriptors such as 'brave' and 'courageous' being used for those speaking out.

Material conditions of life

There is a moral and post-material basis for this conscientious objection (on which rich, middle and poor can unite, as distinct from the material conditions of life that separate them). These are independent and non-partisan sector-by-sector voices. The government tries to cast them in conspiratorial terms as unpatriotic and propagandistic and somehow in consort with the PNP, but they are not. Their demands and decisions are independent.

What opposition should the PNP provide now if it is to restore the hope? If it cannot form an umbrella movement with the other sectors, it should at least maintain dialogue with them and allow them a respectful distance if they desire it. It should communicate its progressive agenda and the internal reforms it is instituting, such as its integrity commission and integrity in public life. It should insist on peaceful opposition through parliament and the courts. It should pursue disclosure, investigations and prosecution through the many public bodies and commissions we have. It should support peaceful and legal vigils, marches and petitions to inform and educate the public. It can consider certain forms of non-cooperation with the government.

Government seems to be planning a massive pork-barrel road programme to win the next elections. This will finally break the economy if the money is spent for politics rather than for genuine development. This makes the role of all oppositions even more critical.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: robert.buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.