Editorial | Celebrating democracy

Prime Minister Andrew Holness didn’t deliver any surprises with respect to the date for the general election, which he announced Sunday night.

Given Dr Holness’ decision to go almost to the wire with the dissolution of Parliament – which would have happened automatically on September 15 – he had little manoeuvrable room for the timing of the vote, if he wasn’t going to stretch the period out to take advantage of the three-month grace period afforded by the constitution after the end of the legislature’s five-year term. That would hardly have been good politics.

So, essentially, the prime minister confirmed what officials of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) have more than whispered for a fortnight: that the election would be announced on August 10; that Parliament would be dissolved the following day; that, in keeping with the constitutional requirements, nomination of election of candidates would happen August 18; and that Jamaicans would vote on September 3.

Dr Holness, however, did something else of importance at the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) rally at which he formally announced the dates.

OUGHT TO CHERISH

The most critical was his reflections on democracy, and the sanctity of the exercise upon which Jamaicans are about to embark. Elections, Dr Holness alluded, were critical expressions of the democratic process, which Jamaicans ought to cherish and not assume were inevitable. They didn’t happen everywhere.

Addressing a large crowd in the capital’s Half-Way Tree square, the prime minister said: “This crowd is representative of Jamaica. You make Jamaica’s democracy stronger. There are many countries in the world where this can’t happen. Don’t take it for granted.

“I have to stand here and account to you for the authority you have given us, the government. And there can be no break in that.

“The authority isn’t forever. It is for a certain period. How we use the authority has to be reviewed … by you the people.”

Dr Holness is, of course, right about the nature of democracy, and the resilience with which it has functioned in Jamaica. Which isn’t to suggest that the process hasn’t faced profound stresses, such as in the 1970s and 1980s when sharp ideological cleavages brought the island close to a civil war. During the long campaign for the 1980 election, for example, more than 800 people died.

But even in those turbulent times no one questioned the election outcomes, or that they fundamentally represented the will voters. Further, in recent times elections have given the winning side razor-thin parliamentary majorities. They were accepted.

NEVER BROKE

The larger point is that while Jamaica’s institutions of democracy have bent, they never broke. They have found ways to right themselves.

The turbulence of the 1970s and ’80s spawned the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), the independent body that manages elections, taking it out of the hands of the government, as well as the Political Ombudsman, whose job is to police adherence to the political code of conduct by parties and their candidates, so as to prevent the excesses of the turbulent decades. Unfortunately, the government took the unwise decision of lumping the stand-alone, independent Political Ombudsman with the EAC, a body designed for an entirely different function.

Nonetheless, as Jamaica prepares to hold its 19th general parliamentary since universal adult suffrage in 1944 – and its 15th since independence – there is little fear of the process not being free and fair, or that it won’t represent the will of voters. In other words, there is a high level of confidence in the conduct of Jamaican elections.

Yet, there is deepening disenchantment by Jamaicans with politics and matters of governance, which manifests in apathy and declining voter turnout at elections. Indeed, only 37.85 per cent of registered voters bothered to cast ballots in the 2020 election, down from 48.37 per cent four years earlier, which was a decline from 53.17 per cent in 2011. In 1980, nearly 87 per cent of the registered electors voted.

Over the next three weeks, this issue, as much as hard policy questions, should be high on the agenda of political leaders. For the formal structures of democracy will atrophy if the core of the democratic process, the people they are supposed to serve, are disinterested.