Dawn Ritch, Contributor
AN ODD thing has happened since Mrs. Simpson Miller won the presidency of the People's National Party. Suddenly everybody else seems to be in power.
She is lectured on this, that and everything by the editorials. That's a daily staple we can count on. But to be publicly lectured by her predecessor now out of office, the current director of elections, as well as the departing head of JAMPRO, is both presumptuous and impolite.
In his farewell address to Parliament, Patterson told her to rush to a Republic and the Caribbean Court of Appeal. More recently he has said that the Jamaican diaspora should get the vote. Why didn't he do it when he was there?
UNCOUTH
Uncouth was Danville Walker, director of elections. This civil servant got above himself when he was guest speaker at a recent public forum. He advised the new Prime Minister to fix the date of general elections.
He also complained that he commands a huge staff, and it was inconvenient for the Electoral Office of Jamaica not to know exactly when it was coming. Mobilisation of his staff, he went on, required logistics. Is this why he's running his own picture in the everlastingly long lists of electors being advertised, who have not been re-verified?
In any event, the Constitution of Jamaica is not there to suit Danville Walker. Mobilisation is expected and that is why a notice period is given of Nomination Day. As the country's director of elections, he ought not to need more than the Constitution provides. As far as I know, he's not running for public office, and need not innovate, nor run his photograph on the cover of election notifications. Indeed, he could have posted the latter at post offices and branch libraries islandwide, and forgotten about it afterwards.
Mr. Walker not only proposes constitutional change, but that there should be financial audits of political parties and donors' names published. He has been in the public limelight for too long. He clearly finds it suspicious that most people don't crave it, yet are not corrupt. Alarmingly, after a decade in that post he now speaks about the possibility of 'buying out an election'.
The people and organisations who promote the disclosure of donors have plainly never made donations or voluntary contributions themselves. They are the media, and many politicians. Most of the people who do, don't need and don't want to have their names called.
Giving money to a political party is not to be undertaken lightly. Only the very rich should do it because only they can afford to lose their stake. Anybody who can't afford to lose his stake cannot and should not, sit at that gaming table. It's no better than poker, and has vastly greater consequences.
METAPHORICAL POKER TABLE
Drug barons and gunmen don't sit at these poker tables, they haunt the public meetings. The members of this metaphorical poker table don't even know who else is sitting there, only the candidate. That is how the candidate ensures that he or she is not bought. It's quite simple, and relatively inexpensive.
The people who believe that political parties should be funded from the public purse plainly have no care about what it really costs. If the costs are already known to monumental when privately funded, the expenses of political parties will mushroom a million times, once they can get their hands on the public purse.
Political parties must remain a private expense. Because money is confidential does not mean that it is necessarily corrupt. The director of elections is impudent to suggest so.
If the candidate wins, and donors backed the winning horse, nobody ever knows whose contribution was the biggest, because it is all shrouded in secrecy, like state secrets. It's an unusual prime minister who decides to have public board meetings on either, or gives away one iota of responsibility.
Funding is not democratic, nor should it be. The demos have the power to make it all a nonsense on election day. According to Mrs. Pat Francis, outgoing head of JAMPRO, that has happened already. She said in a farewell speech, that "Jamaicans are not ready for investment. There is a love-hate relationship with foreign direct investment." She's off to a top job in Geneva, Switzerland, having headed this country's investment and promotion agency for over 10 years. Now she tells us we're not worth it.
Jamaicans aren't fools. We know that Dr. Omar Davies, Finance Minister, gives billions of our tax dollars and public pension funds to foreign investors who lose it, and create no jobs whatsoever. We also know that the biggest foreign investor of all, Mirant, has put their rates so high that it's taken away any disposal income we once might have had. It's pushing up the prices fiercely in supermarkets, and doubling the bills at restaurants. What's there to love about that?
Most unlovely are the brazen pigeon coops piled high masquerading as Spanish hotels on Jamaica's north coast. They block the sea view from all angles, while employing one Jamaican to a room instead of four or five.
UNPREPARED
None of us could have been prepared for foreign investment like that, much less love it. Since Mrs. Francis was the leader in the exercise for so long, it seems uncharitable to chide us for her own failures, especially as a parting shot before decamping to Europe.
Mrs. Simpson Miller has just begun her tenure as Prime Minister, and hardly needs to be told about how ungrateful Jamaicans are. It would have been better had Mrs. Francis left her to find her own disillusionment, if any.
Bruce Golding, Leader of the Opposition, is no alternative. In his recent maiden speech to Parliament, much lauded by media and all the editorials, he failed to mention even once 'external affairs', an omission pointed out by the new Prime Minister in hers. This lack of knowledge about them led to a structurally impossible policy recommendation. The Jamaica Labour Party has turned in upon itself. It is not an appealing sight.
If Madame Prime Minister wins the next general election as I expect, it will not be because the electorate wanted the People's National Party to stick around. They see her as the change from what went before. So if all of what went before could now depart, there would be no serious objection.
