If the post-election analysts follow the usual fashion they will seek to determine why the winners won and why the losers lost. In a departure from custom, we seek here to identify some other winners and losers.
In a close-run thing, the ruling party lost a seat in Parliament. Erstwhile Member of Parliament Danny Melville had become disillusioned with the runnings and surrendered a constituency which had been a PNP sure thing for eight of the nine times it had been put to the vote.
Pundits will surely say that complacency had crept in, partly because the Opposition had gone to pot. Labour had lost zest and seemed resigned to third-term blues; not only in St. Ann, but all over. Internal squabbles surfaced in the quick succession and nobody sang Sankeys anymore. The Leader was cast as a humbug.
Not anymore; not after Thursday in North East St. Ann where hope sprang anew. The winner is not only Shahine Robinson and the party which championed her against two other women and a bold Rastaman. The big winner is the two-party system which is the foundation of what we like to call Jamaican democracy, warts and all.
Those warts stayed benign, however, perhaps because a good chunk of Reneto Adams-led security stood firm. In at least one recorded instance of no-nonsense appeal to political instincts, good sense prevailed.
So potential violence was the big loser; and that may have been the biggest winner of all.
Women won too; three of them vied for the prize on International Women's Day, perhaps the first time so many have tried for the same seat. Some say their gender guaranteed the civility of the campaign.
One of them was the NDM flag-bearer. She can tell Bruce that she tried; but sorry to say, the day of the third party in Jamaican politics is still to come.
