Arnold Bertram, Contributor
Delegates listening attentively during the People's National Party's 69th annual conference, held at the National Arena last Sunday.- Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
It is clear that a significant section of the leadership of the People's National Party (PNP) has not yet awakened to the reality that the party led by Portia Simpson Miller has been beaten by Bruce Golding and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the recently held general elections. As far as they are concerned, there can be no rational explanation for the fact that Portia, Jamaica's most popular politician, has been relegated to the shortest incumbency by any Prime Minister, with the exception of Donald Sangster, who died within three months of taking office.
Until this reality sinks in, the PNP will find itself incapable of uniting around either the rebuilding process which is critical to the future of the party, or the organisation of its parliamentary group into the effective and constructive Opposition that the country is yearning for.
The PNP is in desperate need of the guidance of an elder statesman and no one is more qualified than P.J. Patterson to play this role. After the defeat of the PNP in the 1967 election, it was the 32-year-old Patterson who presented the appraisal report which established the framework for the rebuilding process. Unfortunately, this time around, he seems more intent on being a tactician and combatant for one of the factions in the party. He should not be surprised if he is treated as such. Last Sunday, at the PNP's special-delegates meeting, it was K.D. Knight, not P.J. Patterson, who brought some sanity to the proceedings by insisting on the need for a properly constituted annual conference to be held.
Political opportunism
During the PNP's presidential election campaign, a long line of opportunists emerged, intent on spending Portia Simpson Miller's enormous political capital in their narrow self-interest. This political capital had been built around her unique political personality which combined the emotional factors of gender, class and race in such a manner as to provide for the Jamaican masses a stirring symbol of their own possibilities, and mastery over the fate assigned to them by centuries of racial and economic oppression.
This opportunist trend in the party, comprising candidates and supporters, having convinced itself that Portia Simpson Miller, with a 78 per cent approval rating in March last year, was unassailable, has been unable to come to terms with the fact that Bruce Golding, lacking in charisma and denounced as a flip flop, united the JLP and persuaded a majority of the voters that their interests would be better served by a government under his leadership.
Unbelievably, some still insist that the PNP won and remain hopeful that the courts will reverse the decision of the electorate. Those who subscribe to this school of thought continue to romanticise about the 'Portia factor' even as opinion polls confirm that by the time the election came, Portia's phenomenal popularity had been considerably diminished.
On election day, among the middle and upper classes, the Portia factor negatively affected the PNP vote. In the hills of St. Catherine, Manchester, Clarendon, St. Elizabeth and Trelawny, where the peasantry is the dominant social class, the PNP under Portia did worse than in 2002.
isolation of intelligentsia
The form and substance of Portia's leadership became less and less attractive to the small farming community, characterised by their spirit of self-reliance and their pride in living by the sweat of their brow. Not even Richard Azan, the standard-bearer of 'Team Portia' survived. In the case of the urban poor, and the social stratum described as 'lumpen', the polls suggest that both groups were evenly distributed between both parties.
Within the party, there is another trend which always had reservations as to Simpson Miller's readiness to manage the biggest business enterprise in the country.
These reservations showed up in the PNP presidential campaign among the majority of her Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues, who were of the view that she lacked the preparation and experience of her predecessors, as well as the capacity to unite the party. Significantly, less than 50 per cent of the delegates voted for her in the presidential elections as she finished a mere 200 delegate-votes ahead of first runner-up Dr. Peter Phillips.
The Portia antagonists insist that the former Prime Minister should take full responsibility for the extremely low levels of supportive administrative and managerial capacity with which she surrounded herself. For them, the new palace guard had just too many sycophants, loose cannons and opportunists.
They were worried by the isolation of the intelligentsia and openly critical of the substitution of the cult of the personality for the party as an institution. As far as they were concerned, the PNP had been overrun by elements which were for the most part ignorant of its traditions and disinterested in its historical role in nation building.
Performance and unity - key factors
For those genuinely interested in the rebuilding process and the future of the party, the results of the last general election provide the most profound insights into the pragmatism with which the Jamaican electorate assesses political leadership and interprets its fundamental interests.
Since 1944, the Jamaican electorate has been consistently pragmatic in rewarding performance and punishing disunity, arrogance and absenteeism. In 1938, the masses idolised Bustamante for his fearless leadership in the rebellion and his genuine concern for their welfare. In the general election of 1944, the voters of Western Kingston gave him 67.8 per cent of the votes, and the JLP won 22 of the 32 seats.
However, his failure to make good on his campaign promises brought the love affaire between Bustamante and the urban masses to an end. They ran him out of town in 1949 and swept him and the JLP from office in 1955.
It is significant that despite Bustamante's failures, the electorate only turned to the PNP in 1955 after it had brought an end to the ideological division within the party and united around Norman Manley's economic programme. The PNP then proceeded to implement a range of economic and social programmes for which the electorate rewarded them with an increased majority in 1959. When the party divided on the issue of Federation, the electorate voted them out of office in 1962. And as the divisions deepened, the electorate ensured that they were defeated by an even larger margin in 1967.
Michael Manley won the presidency in 1969, reunited the PNP and built a national alliance for social justice, while the JLP split into three factions. The response of the electorate was to give the PNP a comprehensive victory in the election of 1972. Between 1972 and 1976, Michael Manley transformed the Jamaican society and raised the living standards of the masses. The verdict of the electorate was expressed in the overwhelming PNP victory in the 1976 election.
social life deteriorated
Between 1977 and 1980, irreconcilable divisions surfaced in the PNP and the economic and social life of the country deteriorated to its lowest level in three decades. The pragmatic Jamaican electorate handed the PNP a humiliating defeat and installed Seaga.
Seaga never endeared himself to the Jamaican electorate and they, in turn, were never comfortable with his concept of governance based on the notion that "one man makes fewer mistakes than 60". Seaga's problems were also compounded by his failure to achieve the results promised in the economy. The internal party divisions which his leadership style created crippled the party. The electorate was ready to vote him out in 1983 when the PNP lost its confidence and refused to contest the polls. They served notice in the local government election of 1986 and by 1989, Seaga was out, never to return.
Manley returned to lead the PNP to victory in 1989 and was succeeded by P.J. Patterson in 1992. Patterson invested considerable time and energy to the building of unity and cohesion in the PNP, brought a refreshing non-confrontational style to politics, skilfully orchestrated the levers of power, brought a new dimension to the modernisation of the country's infrastructure and led the PNP to three consecutive electoral victories.
What then made the PNP do better than some expected on election day? In the absence of scientific data, I am guided by my own experience on election day.
At the polling division located on Hillcrest, where I voted and took an interest on behalf of Maxine Henry-Wilson, I saw Comrades wait three hours in the line to vote for the PNP. They were disenchanted, but felt they owed the party their support in the face of what seemed like imminent political disaster.
new opponentelectoral machine The longer it takes the PNP to initiate the rebuilding process, the further they will find themselves behind. Their new political opponent is no longer the JLP of Edward Seaga, but an electoral machine which has been transformed along the lines of the PNP. In the post-election period it is the new Prime Minister and his team which is making the more favourable impression.
Those who have been with the PNP throughout the vicissitudes of political life are confident in the ability of their party to recover. They know that the PNP which built the national movement, took Jamaica out of the colonial matrix and redeemed the soul of our people from the dead hand of our bondage, is more than capable of renewing itself.
They will succeed as long they remind themselves that political leadership is a matter of programme, strategy and tactics, and that the party is accountable to an electorate that rewards performance and unity and punishes arrogance and disunity.
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