André Wright, Production Editor

In the past few weeks, many Jamaicans have, like Pavlovian dogs to the sounding of trumpets and cacophonous ringing of bells, armed themselves with graffiti and guns and have plunged into a maelstrom of blood. And, sadly, from the audience of cynics, the swelling ranks of the politically dispassionate, it draws nothing more than a gaping yawn to an all-too-familiar act in the theatre of the absurd.

The collapse of communities into warring political factions is evidence of a people so shallow, so easily led, that it confounds the notions of growing political maturity. All of a sudden, good-natured neighbours have become so embroiled in toeing the party line that they have forgotten that only the week before they borrowed a wheelbarrow from their now bitter enemy.

Campaign focus

The campaigns have focused on catchphrases and incoherent dance routines from pot-bellied clowns with a hit song in hand to whip the crowds into a frenzy - with the help of a few beers, of course. Because after decades of only negligible growth, soaring crime, and a crumbling social infrastructure, most electors, it seems, are more captivated by the repartee-ridden carnival of colour than by acknowledgement of a right to elevate themselves from a Third-World 'dungle' heap.

And so the hustings concentrate on media-hogging punch lines about 'not changing no course' and other laughter-evoking drivel more focused on entertainment than (un)common sense. And it is entertainment. For the Jamaican shock-absorbing idiom to 'tek serious ting mek joke' has perhaps numbed our sense of hope, of dignity, of inheritance, resulting in a meek surrender to the divisive forces of factionalism. We reject being called niggers, but are satisfied with living a niggardly existence.

While electors wiggle and jiggle to the rancorous rhetoric and vacuous prattling of the political propaganda machinery, they ignore to their peril the more pertinent, more fundamental planks of good governance. When the Goldings and Simpson Millers and Samudas and Buchanans are finished trading fire for fire, the sweat-soaked masses will queue up at public hospitals waiting all day, only to hear they'll have to make the journey tomorrow; and on their way from hospital they may be clobbered senseless by a bandy-legged cowboy cop with a chipon his shoulder; and having spent six weeks in jail will be released without charge; and will spend thousands of dollars retaining a lawyer, all in vain of course because the policeman will have migrated weeks or months before the case was finally heard.

Of course, their houses will be burnt to the ground because the fire truck fell to pieces, not that the 'firefighters' had any water in the first place. Many of their children will leave primary school with negligible literacy and be doomed to low-skilled jobs, becoming easy prey to glamorised gunmen and drug lords.

But for now, many voters will suspend the mental acuity which makes them haggle forever with higglers for the best buy, and settle for the mess of pottage dished out by cunning 'electocrats'. But the electorate needs to be more analytic in their assessment of the dangling carrots of free public health care for children by the ruling People's National Party and free secondary education by the Labour Party. These efforts at tokenism fail to take into consideration the qualitative deficiencies in both the health and education sectors. Will there be real gains for the public? How would free public health care for children be in the public interest with understaffed and underequipped facilities, long lines, inadequate record systems symptomatic of a ramshackle state? And the JLP is well aware that promises of free education will hardly make a substantive difference to a system which churns out a staggering number of dropouts and semi-literates.

The fact is that much of the country will vote on the basis of long-held political affiliation, wonderful witticism and circus shenanigans, not on issues, reducing the electoral process from democracy to 'idiocracy'. But until the poor abandon the messianic, paternalistic political culture that has hoodwinked them, and rather seek to save themselves, they will forever be manipulated and plundered like puppets on a string.

Jesus said the poor will always be with us. Look around you, He couldn't be more right.