EDITORIAL - The shrivelling of G2K

The People's National Party (PNP) has none. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) needs a new standard-bearer for the youth - unless, that is, the JLP has dropped any intention of transformative politics and regressed on the notion of seriously enticing young people to the process and of gaining their vote.

Should the governing party take the foregoing observation lightly, it need only reflect on this week's paranoid harrumphing by Mr Delano Seiveright, the president of what, effectively, is the JLP's youth arm, Generation 2000, or, as they now prefer to be called, G2K.

So far, attention has been focused primarily on Mr Seiveright's complaints against, and the declared intention of, G2K to go after media commentators perceived to be biased towards the PNP. But more profoundly declarative of this young politician's potentially damaging effect on the JLP among thoughtful Jamaicans hoping for change in the conduct of politics was what he had to say, and worse, what he implied about political polling in Jamaica.

Attack on pollsters

Stripped to the core, the message most people will receive is that if poll data are against the JLP, it is either the pollsters don't know what they are doing, or they have manipulated the numbers.

That G2K has come to this, a throwback to the old tribal politics that most Jamaicans are desperate to transcend, is particularly sad, given the origin of the organisation and the initial pedigree of the group.

At the turn of the last decade, with many of our countrymen anguished that Jamaica could well be falling into the category of failed states, the birth of G2K, by young professionals concerned with ideas, appeared to offer hope. It may have been aligned to one of the major parties, but its concepts were beyond the narrowly partisan.

Unfortunately, G2K has deteriorated under Mr Seiveright's stewardship. Its leaders may wear suits, their bodies may not protrude from buses on their way to party conferences, and they may communicate via BlackBerrys.

But G2K has evolved to being less politically low-minded than those that were engaged in what the JLP's leader, Mr Bruce Golding, at another time, used to pejoratively refer to as "old-time politics".

Some of that came through at the organisation's news conference Monday at which Mr Seiveright confessed, more or less, to seeing, and fearing, perceived anti-JLP spectres behind every microphone, in front of every camera, and in occupation of every newsroom.

That Mr Seiveright complains about these perceptions is, obviously, his right. Indeed, no one in media can assume to be beyond criticism, or being called to account for how he or she operates - so long as that does not translate to being "set up" for physical violence.

However, Mr Seiveright and G2K would have been diminished by his statement about discrepancies in the various opinion polls recently published by Jamaican media and his call for an "independent analysis" of their findings on party standings. So, G2K intends to take advice from pollsters in the US and Britain, then gather up the media houses to explain the methodologies of their surveyors.

Some will see an attempt at, albeit weak-arm, intimidation. Of course, neither Mr Seiveright nor G2K has expressed such concerns when, in the past, the polls were in the JLP's favour.

It is a shame that such puny politics has overtaken an organisation that had so much promise.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.