I pick Audley Holness

Orville Taylor

By the time you are boiling down the coconut milk and the national Sunday dish of chicken and rice and peas, the dinner menu will be full of greens and two men would have taken off their sweatsuits, tucked in the belly, turned up the nose, faced the starter, and prepared to have the victory meal.

It is difficult to choose who is the most suitable to consume the victuals. One looks like he has tasted many meals, while the other must have a discerning sense of smell. Yet, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is between the devil and the deep blue sea, and I am not sure which is the sea.

Let us face it: The need for the JLP is to find a candidate that can unite it, and challenge the PNP for state power. Thus, the question really isn't whether or not the leader of the JLP is the best person to lead the party, the most qualified, or the most visionary. There is much evidence to the contrary in our history. Rather, it is about who can win a general election, bearing in mind the opponents they face. Despite the relative absence from national discourse, unfulfilled promises to the Jamaican working class, secrecy and apparent duplicity on the panacea mega-project destined to rename the islets into Mannish Water Islands, the Portia Simpson Miller-led PNP is a formidable foe.

Busta's JLP

Believe it or not, the weak electoral performance of the JLP since the 1970s is its own undoing. First of all, a very astute Busta-mante (and now I know I'm going to animate petrified Jurassic DNA) understood that an electorate which was little different from that which came from out of slavery was one that he could have used as his base. Thus, he created scores of 'built-by-Labour' junior secondary and all-age schools, which took young people and slammed them into a wall of hopelessness and mediocrity at age 15, after completing grade nine. This guaranteed that with the majority of young people not having access to true secondary education, Busta and his green team would build on his populism and have an electorate that was undereducated to lead like sheep.

It is not rocket science, nor did it require any excessive usage of his considerable intellect. Busta, once in a public address, worked the crowd up to such a frenzy that after boasting of a range of good things he had done for the poor, had them refrain, "You, Chief!" when asked who was the best person to "tief unoo money". The simple point is, elections are not generally won in Jamaica by intellectualism. For intellectuals and brain merchants to win elections in Jamaica, they must understand and appeal to the masses. That is why Norman Manley lost the 1961 'referendumb' and the election the following year.

After, the JLP made a mockery of the promises of making the country a place for the poor and black, widened the gap between rich and poor, denigrated blackness and trampled on Rastafari. Donald Sangster and Hugh Shearer eroded the green grass-roots support. Therefore, when Michael Manley, the whitest head of government to date, embraced his undetectable African ancestry, and gave tacit approval to Ras-tafari, he shifted the 'PMP' from the elitist creature built by O. T. Fairclough and guided by Norman Manley, to an even 'rootsier' party of the people than Bus-tamante ever could have made the JLP. The PNP took from the JLP its power base that Bustamante craftily constructed, and never gave it back.

Manley gave to the people a firebrand councillor - no, not Her Worship 'WTF' Brown Burke, but Portia Simpson. With many people-oriented programmes in the 1970s and lots of rhetoric to match, it required external pressure and internal collaboration to derail the 'Better Must Come' juggernaut.

By 1974, the JLP was no longer the party of the people, and it didn't help that the sociologist/soc-ial anthropologist who had perhaps the best insight of Jamaican grass-roots culture seemed to have the ears, eyes, and heart of the moneyed bourgeoisie and elites who had abandoned Norman Manley's PNP. After the 1980 deliverance sweep by Edward Seaga, the economic and social targets did not come to fruition, and by 1983, the populace was again looking to their roots - the PNP.

For four consecutive elections, the Jamaican electorate had fallen out of love with Edward Seaga and his authoritarian style of leadership, and despite winning absolute majority in Parlia-ment in 1983 because of the cowardice of the PNP; he did little to fix relations with the working class after the 1985 general strike.

'PNP country'

The default setting on the electoral computer is orange, and un-less someone presents a real alternative to the Comrades, the elections are theirs to lose as long as Jamaica has a small middle class and large working-class base, as it does now. Seaga is perhaps the reason that P. J. Patterson won so many terms, because I bet you that none of the trade unionists can say that the PNP did anything major for workers and their rights from 1992 to 2002.

That is why Bruce Golding won in 2007 - because he was seen as a fresh alternative to the PNP and its undelivered promises to the workers up to then. After he sacrificed his party and almost the nation on the altar of Prezi, Andrew Holness got two simple charges - to distance himself from the Dudus debacle and win an election. His handling of the debate with Simpson Miller was ordinary, his unreadiness and the 'duppy stories' came back to haunt him, and his tirade against the press showed that he learned little from the PNP's 2007 loss because of Portia's intemperate broadside against the media. Worse, he timed the election with the precision of a rhythm methodologist with polymenorrhoea. Indeed, he was mentored by Seaga on electoral success, and he learned well. As an orator, he speaks an English-influenced meso-lect, with the pedestrian speed and blandness of P. J. and others. Nevertheless, he is young and has time to learn.

Shaw's history

On the other hand, Audley Shaw is a known quality and a bellyful of quantity. A former member of the People's National Party (PNP), he carries traces of Comrade DNA. Moreover, his membership in that party was during the Michael Manley years, when the party's vision was clear and 'Joshua' was transforming his idealism with strong populism. He knows 'ray-ray' politics and is a much better speaker. Moreover, he can transcend the Jamaica Patwa and jump to some approximation of English in mid-sentence and return to a level of language that only Dean Peart and my retired police friend can surpass.

True, Audley can speak to the masses, but we remember that he did give us duppy stories, too, when he suggested that the global financial crisis of 2008 would not seriously affect Jamaica. Further-more, after taking us back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he 'skulled' the exams and the country got a grade of 'failed absent', causing us to have an even harder time when Peter Phil-lips rolled into the fray. Moreover, not wanting to use canine references, Shaw is a pensionable 61 years old. Apart from having a share of the responsibility for the JLP's fortunes since the 1980s, he might not be able to learn new tricks.

So, what do we have and who do I pick? I do not gamble, be-cause my blood vessels are too weak. If I didn't show my hand and back any of those who use the fist as their sign, I certainly am not going to go in the middle of the V signers and rupture my angina! Not a chance. What matters, though, is that our democracy is alive and well, and we need a vibrant opposition. What a choice! My nose tells me one thing and my guts another.

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