Editorial - Politics in transition?

FOR the second time within a year a Member of Parliament is surrendering his seat and expressing disillusionment with the state of Jamaican politics.

Francis Tulloch, the PNP member for Northwest St. James, indicated last week that he is quitting at the end of this month. It is of some significance that although he signalled his intention to quit a year ago after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, he could have pleaded ill health as a reason and left it at that.

Instead Mr. Tulloch felt constrained to make the point that "the country could not move forward as long as the type of tribalism we practice in Jamaica continues".

Last November Danny Melville, his party colleague from Northeast St. Ann, also resigned, expressing similar sentiments, but in decidedly harsher terms.

Mr. Melville spoke scathingly of his role as a parliamentarian "co-ordinating patronage and being a symbol of tribalism". He scored the political system as "glorifying mediocrity and denigrating any vision of excellence"; and he pointedly blamed the administration for failing to tame corruption and crime.

Mr. Tulloch has been careful to state that he was not attacking either his own PNP or the JLP, pointing instead to what he said was the need for a broad consensus among political and non-political leadership.

It seems to us that new trends and attitudes toward politics are coming to the forefront. We think it is reflected in polls which record a growing apathy among the uncommitted; and indeed in the third and now a fourth party in the field.

Even before this the most notable instance of disaffection with traditional politics emerged with the departure of Bruce Golding from the opposition JLP, renouncing the tribalism he had been a part of for many years.

While there may have been other personality factors in his case Mr. Golding's departure did raise questions about political practice and the unsavoury linkages which are the essence of tribalism. Yet even so the NDM he has now abandoned is still to carve a substantial niche in public favour.

If yesterday's meeting of the top leadership of the two major parties signals a new approach of political co-operation the future prospects may be better than expected.

For a start the current warfare must cease.

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