Arnold BertramON SATURDAY, February 25, of the 3,890 delegates eligible to vote in the PNP presidential elections, a record-breaking 3,808, representing 97.7 per cent polled their votes.
Portia Simpson Miller emerged the winner with 46.7 per cent of the votes ahead of Peter Phillips' 40.5 per cent. As predicted, the other two candidates, Omar Davies and Karl Blythe, were never in the race. Between them they accounted for a mere 12.8 per cent.
I enthusiastically supported the candidacy and programmatic platform of Peter Phillips. However, the decision of the delegates obliges all of us to close ranks and support the new leader.
Let me offer her sincere congratulations on a landmark achievement and wish her every success.
In contemplating the task she now faces I can only commend to her Norman Manley's prayer for his
successor in 1969.
"I pray for him [her] I pray that he [she] may have the strength and the wisdom to unite the party and to give it a new dynamic and a new sense of purpose. I pray that he [she]may receive the support and loyalty in his [her] leadership that he [she] will need if we are to win through and the political future is to be preserved.
"I pray for him [her] on the lonely road he [she] must travel, and will find on his [her]desk so often the legend 'the buck stops here' So often he [she] will know that on his [her] shoulders alone 'rests the finality of decision and action and the judgment of history'."
However, if the internal party contest was close, there was no doubt about where the masses stood. They endorsed her victory islandwide in an unprecedented outpouring of emotion.
I can only recall two other occasions in the political history of modern Jamaica when the masses evinced such an intensity of feeling and solidarity.
The first was the response to Bustamante, after his release from prison in May 1938. This was at the height of the Labour Rebellion which he had led fearlessly. For the first time in their experience, the masses had found a leader who, though not one of them, was willing to put his life on the line as he offered militant leadership in their confrontation with the colonial state for better working conditions.
RAISED HELL
Norman Manley was on hand to witness the reunion between the
people and their leader and his description of the scene that night on the waterfront is well worth repeating. "Nobody could ever understand the utter fantastic devotion that Busta had from the people. There were 1,000 men there that would have jumped into the sea and drowned happily for that man, and they cheered ... they cheered for 10, 15 minutes; they raised hell; they dragged him off the truck and they took him away in triumph."
The second was the mass response to Michael Manley's speech at the 38th Annual Conference of the People's National Party, which had to be moved from the arena to the stadium because of the size of the crowd. Manley had by then established his credentials as Jamaica's most passionate, indefatigable and scientific campaigner for social justice. No one had spoken with greater passion about the anguish and suffering of the poor and dispossessed.
No one had done more to relieve their suffering and to defend their right to dignity and respect. The vast crowd remained in the sun to the very end to hear their leader and to acclaim him as their 'Joshua.'
In Portia's case, the response of the masses to her is first of all an investment of faith. The truth is that among our political leaders, it is she who has emerged as a symbol of hope, for the dispossessed and their inspiration to dream dreams and rouse their spirits to a realisation of their possibilities.
Politically, she has served notice of her potential to unleash a flood that could threaten the political survival of Golding and the JLP.
THE UNITY OF THE
PARTY COMES FIRST
The PNP is already showing signs that they have put the internal political competition behind them and are now ready to restore the unity and cohesion necessary to defeat the JLP in the next general elections. Simpson Miller's first responsibility is to ensure that the environment is created and maintained in which this drive for unity proceeds. The lessons of 1976 should remind every member of the PNP of the price of disunity.
In December 1976 the PNP won a landslide victory, winning 47 of the 60 seats. Four months later the party was in complete disarray, hopelessly divided around its economic policy. As the economy deteriorated the divisions within the party became more extreme until 1980 when the PNP went down to its worst defeat since 1944.
This time around, the capacity of the party to unite around its economic
policy is again going to be put to the test, and the first hurdle will be at the budget presentation in April. For the last thirteen years Omar Davies as Minister of Finance has presided over the economy. He has never been accorded his due for the improvements to the economy under his stewardship.
The problem is that despite the data, the public does not share his view of progress and steadfastly refuses to believe that the extreme poverty which is their lot cannot be addressed immediately.
FAITH
For the masses the investment of faith in Simpson Miller is expected to bring an immediate substantial return in the form of jobs, and a comprehensive improvement of the physical environment in which they live.
The reality is they are hardly aware that the country has borrowed to its limit and will have to earn before it can spend. They have never been sufficiently educated around the fact that tourism is our only competitive export, and that despite our investment in education only a quarter of our students pass English and mathematics at the CXC level.
These persistently low levels of education and training are manifested in the low productivity of our labour force and in an economy which had hardly grown in over 30 years. This is what accounts for the joblessness and the marked drift towards crime and anarchy.
If the PNP is to unite around its economic policy and speak with one voice after the presentation of the budget everyone will have to make concessions. Omar Davies cannot continue to adopt the posture of an imperious schoolmaster speaking to delinquent students and the new leader will have to spend a part of her political capital in explaining that the satisfaction of wants are limited by the ability to pay.
There is also the sobering lesson that once the elections are over the electorate gives way in strategic importance to the investors in the economy and the holders of the national debt. Leadership, therefore, is faced with the task of simultaneously of addressing the concerns of divergent interests.
This brings me to the immense political capital which Portia Simpson Miller has accumulated. There are those who contend that this capital can be compared to that of Michael Manley in 1972 and Seaga in 1980.
As is to be expected, there is no shortage of volunteers ready and willing to expend it. First, there are the opportunists who are now tripping over themselves to establish either some point of connection with her present political fortunes, or to manufacture some evidence of
support during the campaign.
These are closely followed by those who spare no effort to exaggerate their role in the campaign, thus giving credence to the maxim, "Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan."
IMPORTANT POSITIONS
This group has already assigned themselves important positions in the state ranging form cabinet minister to the chairmanship of the biggest state corporations. Finally, there are important sources of guidance which seem set to exert considerable
influence in this extremely important period of transition.
The question is which of these groups, if any, will be given the
opportunity of spending the political capital that she has accumulated over three decades in the political vineyard? My own view is that despite the competing claims, her political capital is going to be spent on her terms and as a result of her interpretation of political reality.
Arnold Bertram, historian and former parliamentarian, is current chairman of Research and Product Development Ltd. Email redev@cwjamaica.com.
