Putting the mock in democracy

The pungent odour of elections pervades the air, and like Christmas, it is just around the corner. Filling the atmosphere, we all are waiting with bated (or baited) breath as Prime Minister of Education Andrew Holness plays a keep-them-guessing game not unlike that which was overplayed by P.J. Patterson when he postponed his retirement more often than Finance Minister Audley Shaw rescheduled the revelation of information on the state of relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It's a big guess. We don't know. Just as we don't know what happened to cause the pre-FINSAC debacle, what Joseph Hibbert's role was in the Mabey & Johnson corruption case, who engaged Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, where the 500 truckloads of beach sand went, who is responsible for the disappearance of the chairs and carpet from the Montego Bay Conference Centre, and why Bruce Golding really demitted office with a year to spare.

Ready for polls?

However, let it be made clear that the holding of elections any time before the December 2012 deadline is not, in any way, shape or form, in the interest of the Jamaican people. Rather, it is the result of politicians legislating statutes which allow the prime minister to selfishly call elections whenever, in his or her opinion, it is in the interest of the ruling party. This is precisely what Golding promised to address when he was in Opposition, and it is part of his last manifesto. So, isn't it ironic that after he has played his last hurrah, we are no better off than in 1983, when both his and Holness' early mentor called a snap election in the blink of an eye?

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller, apparently forgetting about this, threatens to resist any election which is called while the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) is in its current state of unreadiness. She must have not seen Star Wars, because its "pointless to resist". She and her crew had 18 years to prevent this abuse of the electorate, which she herself used in her own numbers guessing game in 2007.

Still, this very act itself - of playing 'seh-feh' with the Jamaican voters - says that the will of the people is really an expendable right.

This, therefore, sets the tone for the further trampling on our democracy by persons who now seek to achieve or retain parliamentary status, despite already spitting in the face of our electoral rules. We may wish to start with the Nouveau Gang of Five: Daryl Vaz, Gregory Mair, Michael Stern, Shahine Robinson and Everald Warmington. All of these took on foreign citizenship, and with full knowledge that they were strangers, slithered on to the nomination list and wriggled their way into the aptly monikered Lower House.

Danville and d'Anville

These five cost the people of Jamaica more than $100 million. It is not Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie or Alfred Hitchcock, but the intrigue deepens. A clear faux pas was committed by the then director of elections, Danville Walker, who, himself unqualified for the position, being a Yankee, misguided the candidates and the public that they were eligible for election. While there is no evidence - although the temptation is greater now - to conclude that Walker wilfully 'colted' the game, he, by this act of negligence, was guilty of misconduct and in a labour tribunal or court would have grounds to be dismissed.

And what was the punishment for Danville, whose name interestingly comes from Jean-Baptiste de Bourgignon d'Anville, a cartographer for the French King Louis XV? Danville was given responsibility for one of the most sensitive and prestigious areas of our revenue and border protection and sovereignty administration. Coincidentally, the original d'Anville redrew the world map to suit the French and facilitated their rise as a colonial power. Careful what you name your children.

Now, the ubiquitous Walker, who strolled from one powerful public-sector job to another, has his American eagle eye set on a seat in Central Manchester, hoping to unseat the People National Party's (PNP) Peter Bunting. Whatever might have been his successes in the Customs Department, he ruffled many feathers, and is leaving some unruffled hairs behind, his ambitions are an affront as he seeks to conquer more frontiers. You be the judge.

Apparently, it's the rarefied air of Manchester. However, in 2007, communications specialist at the National Works Agency, Vando Palmer, was campaigning for a PNP seat and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), then in Opposition, rightfully created such a stink, a ram goat would smell like cologne. True, Walker resigned after it was announced that he would be running, but while still making up his mind, he was invited to the halls of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica to give advice and share his expertise. Now, kicking itself, because it would not have invited him had it known that his blood was turning green, the commission must be wondering if d'Anville drew them a map which facilitates the route of the green bus.

Adding spit to the wound, head of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Joan Gordon-Webley, and Camile Buchanan, CEO of Caymanas Track Limited, are doing like Danville and seeking a seat. Gordon-Webley is a known Labourite, who already has had questions of partiality raised about her stewardship. Of course, she has consistently rubbished the arguments and allegations. Nonetheless, she still never explained why garbage skips, owned by the NSWMA, were neatly labelled with the same type of paint and stencils as the letters 'NSWMA', with the name Gregory Mair, in the 2009 by-election. Buchanan is as much a public employee as Palmer was in 2003, and has finally yielded to pressure in preparing to quit.

Making hay while sun shine

Finally, avowed socialist-for-life and hard-working patriot, Sharon Hay-Webster, might have got such a hard blow from her PNP colleagues that the concussion made her not only cross the line of logic, but that of the Lower House. Attacked by the JLP - so too was her then junior colleague, Ian Hayles - in clear retribution for the unmasking of the Gang of Five and the shortcomings of Danville, she was quickly thrown out as the courts came calling. After a WikiLeaks article revealed that she had not gone all the way in renouncing her American citizenship, she chose to resign from the party. Of course, the party did not wish to wait to see how her case, as she was born with stars and stripes in her mouth, would end up, since she maintained that unlike Daryl and others, there was a vast difference.

Now, clearly intent on securing her pension, which she finally earned in the summer of 2011, she achieved the goal and was expected to do a swansong and bow out gracefully. Notwithstanding this, her only bow was to the new prime minister of education, and Shaw embraced her with more zeal than the suggestions of the IMF. That cannot be right. She took a PNP seat and held it independently. To cross is to double-cross her electors. As my colleague Daraine Luton wrote last Thursday, the voting pattern does not favour her victory. In any event, even if she were retained as a PNP candidate, she should have called it quits as she now taints her legacy.

Nevertheless, given all of these and the prime minister of education suggesting that a proposed investment in Jamaica will only come if his party is returned to power, what do we really have to look forward to?

I don't know, but the vote is yours.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI and a talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.

Modern-day gang of five

Stern, Mair, Robinson, Vaz, Warmington