Editorial | Near folly of two rallies

The People’s National Party (PNP) did the right thing in calling off its planned mass meeting tonight at Cross Roads square in Kingston.

It saved the police from having to test the wisdom – we say folly – of granting the PNP and the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) permits to hold big rallies, at the same time, within two kilometres of each other. The JLP will be just up the road, to the north, in Half Way Tree, where Prime Minister Andrew Holness is expected to announce the date of the general election.

The life of the current Parliament ends on September 15. While Dr Holness could, constitutionally, stretch the time for the vote up to three months after that date, he isn’t expected to do so.

The security forces, the police and the army, probably have – perhaps with good reason – great confidence in their logistics and security management skills, and, therefore, their ability to have controlled the two events simultaneously.

Nonetheless, this newspaper believes it to be unwise and imprudent to take clearly avoidable and imprudent risks, especially when they pose potentially negative consequences for national security and the democratic process. So, even if the PNP had applied first for its meeting permit, given the political circumstances, and the almost certainty of the prime minister announcing the date of the poll, the opposition party should have been prevailed upon to postpone its rally – have the permit rescinded.

Its decision ought not to have been a purely voluntary undertaking, which the PNP crows about as a demonstration of its commitment to placing “the interests of the Jamaican people above partisan politics”.

Had PNP not cancelled its Cross Roads meeting, it would have meant two highly charged bands of political supporters attending rallies in close proximity of each other, and having to use the same routes, at the same time, to and from the events. And at night.

MAJOR CONFLAGRATION

In those circumstances, it is not hard to imagine even a minor confrontation between misguided supporters erupting into a major conflagration, setting the tone for this final leg of a long campaign that, up to now, has been largely peaceful, marred mostly by supporters tearing down the each other’s posters and flags. Most Jamaicans do not want a return to the 1970s and ’80s when the island’s election campaigns were defined by violence and the stealing and stuffing of ballot boxes in so-called garrison constituencies/communities.

If a bullet was dodged, the overwhelming majority are thankful for it. The police have hopefully learned a lesson.

Meantime, Jamaicans look forward to the remainder of the campaign that is peaceful, transcending party bases and framed by serious policy debates that set out each side’s vision for the country, and why they should be voted for. In other words, the JLP and the PNP must give Jamaicans reasons to vote in numbers beyond the meagre 37.8 per cent of the registered electorate, who cast ballots in the 2020 general election.

In this regard, The Gleaner, on behalf of the electorate insists upon two things, one of which relates to one of the mechanisms for keeping the peace and creating the environment for a violence-free campaign, where the great contestation is of ideas.

We call for greater assertiveness by, and visibility of, the Political Ombudsman, or the proxy thereof, in making the best use of a self-imposed bad situation.

The Political Ombudsman, a legal office with quasi-judicial authority, polices a code of conduct, to which parties, their candidates and supporters are to adhere, with the aim of preventing tensions that might lead to violence. This office was one of two critical institutions – the other being the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), which manages the nuts-and-bolts of elections – that grew out of the turbulent, violence-prone elections of the 1970s and 1980s. In the long 1980 campaign more than 800 people died.

TEMPER CONDUCT

While the Political Ombudsman didn’t have the power to sanction politicians for breaching the code of conduct, the moral weight of the office’s finding, and the shame of being called out for bad behaviour, helped to temper politicians’ conduct.

However, last year the government scrapped the independent stand-alone Political Ombudsman. It subsumed the office that dealt with nuanced, ethical issues of political and campaign behaviour into the ECJ, which has had great success in the hard elements of election management. Now, the nine members of the ECJ, including four representing political parties (two each from the JLP and the PNP) are the Political Ombudsman – a conceptually bad, and potentially fraught formulation. It ensures an absence of consensus.

Nevertheless, in the remaining period of the campaign, the Political Ombudsman, for whom Llofraun Thompson, substantively the director for political party registration at the ECJ, is the front person, has to be proactive in noting and seeking to head off likely bad situations.

Ms Thompson, if she has the authority to speak or act without the specific instruction of the ombudsman collective, might have intervened early, advising the PNP to cancel tonight’s meeting, rather than the party acting solely on its own so late in the day.

Second, the parties, especially the opposition, must urgently publish their manifestos.

We repeat, manifestos are road maps to policies, which give voters definitive, written proposals, which they can analyse, without the noise of platform rhetoric, and determine their worth and efficacy. They are also points of accountability for governments. Voters can check promises against achievements.