EDITORIAL - Jamaica's politics left in the blocks

If nothing else, the London Olympics reconfirmed Jamaica's status as a global athletics power, especially in the sprints.

Our runners won 12 medals, placed Jamaica third, after the United States and Russia, in track and field events. Ranked on a per-capita basis overall, Jamaica, with a population of 2.7 million, was fourth. Our athletes secured more than four medals for every million of us living on the island. With regard to the number of gold medals won - four - we were second to Grenada on a per capita basis.When the medals were weighted for quality, with gold getting the most points, Grenada, with its lone medal, gold, did better. As for medals against national economic output, again only marginally poorer Grenada did "better".

Significant lessons reside within these statistics, not least when they can teach about areas of national life.

These days, Jamaica, by and large, reaps its sporting success, with athletes, who were developed and trained at home by world-renowned coaches in a system that is a transparent meritocracy. Like at the global levels, the rules are clear and rigorously enforced.

RULES THE SAME FOR ALL

Athletes who run the best times win. In significant national events, they are subject to the same false-start rules as at the Olympics or World Championships in Athletics. If they run outside their lanes, they are disqualified. They are subject to the same drug-testing regime at home as on the international circuit. Apart from the official invigilators, thousands of people get to watch the athletes, pronounce on their performance, and help to ensure than they adhere to the rules.

In this meritocracy, for example, Warren Weir went to Jamaica's National Stadium for the Olympic trials as a relative unknown. Based on reputation, the supposedly smart money was on Nickel Ashmeade to be our third representative in the 200 metres. Weir upset those ideas and, in accordance with the rules, went to London. He won the Olympic bronze.

Unfortunately, these world-class qualities that are so obvious in Jamaica's athletics, which other nations would like to emulate, seem to fall short in, if they are not absent from, our political management.

MURKY SELECTION PROCESSES

Political electoral contests, for example, are opaque affairs, with murky processes for selecting delegates, whose decision may likely rest on the value of the notes wrapped in a candidate's campaign shirt and the size and quality of the lunch served at the convention.

In other areas, too, our political parties are closed shops, with very little, or no, accountability to anyone, even as they seek to control the levers of the State. Their financiers can operate in the shadows with little opportunity for the public to determine to whom leaders may become beholden, or whether later policy actions may have been inspired by the contributions of party donors.

Further, despite their lip service to change, there is little sign of urgency on the part of lawmakers to make the system for transparent. Legislation for political party registration and financing continues to lag.

If Jamaica approached athletics as it does its politics, we would have been left in the blocks.

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