EDITORIAL -The real losers in Thursday's election

DID THE people of Cassia Park do a stupid thing Thursday by electing the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Beverly Prince as their local representative? Prince polled 1,586 votes to the People's National Party's (PNP) Sheryn Broomfield's 1,176 in a division with 10,575 eligible voters to reclaim a seat she had represented prior to 2012.

Elections are an important part of our democracy. After an election, people interpret the results the way they want, usually trying to eke out something positive from it. In this instance, the JLP sees it as an indictment on the PNP leadership, and the PNP says it was always a safe JLP seat which they wrested from them in 2012. Our concern is not about the results as the political elites of both parties will be analysing the numbers and drawing their own conclusions as they try to chart the way forward.

In the heat of the campaign, People's National Party (PNP) President and Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller warned prospective voters against stupidity. Mrs Simpson Miller, it is reported, told a public meeting that it made no sense voting for the JLP candidate because the member of parliament for East Central St Andrew in which the division falls is Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips, who represents her party.

rhetoric and reality

We acknowledge that there is a wide gap between campaign rhetoric and reality. However, to hopscotch over that statement is to miss the broader point of Mrs Simpson Miller's message and its implications for representational politics in 2013. And this is an example of what is so maddening about our politics, where the main political parties continue to decide on how the spoils will be shared, effectively shutting out significant portions of the population from all decision-making and policy formulation. It is relevant to examine this statement also, especially against the background that more than 8,000 persons did not vote in that election.

Indeed, there appear to be genuine reasons for persons to become even more skeptical about the political process. Is the prime minister suggesting that a JLP councillor cannot expect to get any cooperation from the member of parliament who is PNP? Does this mean that Cassia Park residents will be punished for electing a JLP councillor?

We don't know yet how Miss Prince plans to represent her division, but she has already started talking about urgent infrastructure work that needs to be done in the Cassia Park Division. But for her to provide effective leadership, there has to be a relationship between those who she represents and her as representative. The question is, will she be able to achieve anything worthwhile for her division in a PNP-dominated KSAC?

If the prime minister and her party are serious about "one Jamaica", they have to do more than chant these sentiments at convenient intervals. What is obvious is that the two-party system often works for its members but not necessarily for the rest of Jamaica.

The country needs politicians who understand that communities deserve to be given basic services, and it should not depend on their political affiliation, for it is this very partisanship that is responsible for the emergence of so many distressed, dysfunctional communities.

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