Ian Boyne, Contributor
The euphoria over the leadership of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller is dissipating and political pundits are saying she had better call the elections sooner rather than later for she faces a reenergised, fighting-fit Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
The Gleaner/Bill Johnson poll last weekend showed that her support was slipping, though the JLP was not the beneficiary of that decline. Meanwhile, columnist Mark Wignall has written several negative articles of the woman he campaigned for in the Press for the Presidency of the People's National arty (PNP), and another leading media supporter in the run-up to the PNP presidential race, talk-show host Wilmot Perkins, has also abandoned her, hurling caustic criticisms of her leadership. None of this surprises me.
I knew that once Portia won the presidential race, neither Wignall nor Perkins would support her over Bruce Golding, despite their own protestations about other people's middle class biases. Their support for Portia was based more on their antipathy for Omar Davies and Peter Phillips and their desire to see the 'Drumblair aristocracy' routed.
Unrealistic expectations
Secondly, the expectations surrounding Portia's Prime Ministership were unrealistic and overblown. As media practitioners, we have failed to educate people about the realities and constraints of politics and economics in the real world. And some of us, because of ignorance or political bias( or both) feed utopian and millenarian political expectations, and then when they are dashed, we seek to crucify the leaders.
I gave my warning very early. In my column the week after her presidential victory, I stated bluntly, "The PNP faces the real prospect of a fifth term-if Portia calls the election in a few months. She can't wait too long. Euphoria is ephemeral." It is interesting that the lead story for The Sunday Gleaner last week used the same word 'euphoria', stating that "the euphoria for Portia Simpson Miller after her election as People's National Party President in February has largely collapsed ..."
In that column I went on to say that, "Remember, as Rex Nettleford always reminds us, Palm Sunday (with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem) is followed by the crucifixion on Good Friday(according to the Christian tradition). Timing will be critical to Portia." I saw it from then. As a keen student of political events locally and globally, as well as development studies and international economics, it required no clairvoyance to see that the desires of the masses for Portia bore no relationship to reality, and once that became evident, they would become disillusioned.
Encouraging early poll
One JLP propagandist took to the airwaves to say that as a PNP supporter (and worse as a Christian), I was encouraging the Prime Minister to call the elections early and fool up the people before they found out she did not really have the capacity to make a difference. I was playing no such role. I was simply doing my job as a commentator to offer incisive, nuanced and detached analysis, speaking of 'real politics', rather than philosophy.
This is how I ended my column that week after her election, with everybody still on Cloud Nine: "The honeymoon will not be long, though. Portia has to strike the iron when it is hot and before the cheering dies down". Political commentators must be able to see accurately down the pike, not flip flop all over the place.
The Bill Johnson poll showed, significantly, that Portia's loss has been in the uncommitted category. Again quoting from my column, I stated "the biggest nightmare for Bruce is Portia's ability to galvanise the uncommitted voters-a sizeable constituency. The swing voters are those who decide elections and this is precisely the category which Portia has the power to ignite. She has the power to generate hope in the uncommitted, to win their hearts and minds, to make them believe she can make a difference and that it won't be the same-old, same-old. To make them believe it's not the same old PNP."
Fleeting euphoria
The issues were clear to me from early: Portia had a race against time, euphoria was fleeting, people's patience was thin and the uncommitted were looking for early signals of a change from the past, new directions, new pathways. If that were not perceived they would be gone.
There are some larger questions which must be analysed in terms of what is possible in an economy like ours and in the sort of golbalised era in which we find ourselves. Unfortunately, many people are not interested in these issues. They are bored with them for they require reading and analysis. They require thinking and that is what many people avoid. Our people are always on the hunt for Messiahs and after they find them, they are soon crucified. That was what I was warning Portia about.
She still has time. She is still comfortably ahead of the JLP with a 12 percentage point lead, though Bill Johnson in electronic media interviews has said the seat standings will be quite close and I know the JLP election strategy is focusing on winning seat by seat. After all, they don't have a charismatic, dynamic leader whom they can easily sell to the public. And when Portia went up against technocratic-type leaders in the PNP presidential race, you saw what she did to them.
Portia still should not be depressed by the poll results for, as her Information Minister has said, no one could have realistically expected that the high bounce the party received from her election as the first female President of the party would remain. There had to be a drop.
And, despite the drop in her popularity ratings, the Gleaner/Bill Johnson poll found that 55 per cent of the persons surveyed approved of the Prime Minister's performance while only 16 per cent disapproved. And as much as 29 per cent expressed no view - which means they are open to being impressed. So, according to The Sunday Gleaner report, "according to the pollster, 60 per cent of the undecided voters have a favourable view of Mrs. Simpson Miller while nine per cent hold an unfavourable view". This is significant. And compared with the fact that "for the JLP's Golding, 27 per cent have a favourable view, while 34 per cent hold an unfavourable view."
The PNP has experienced a cumulative 14 percentage point slump over the last four months, but, worryingly for Bruce Golding's JLP, the defectors are not going in their direction.
Discrediting polls
Strategically, the JLP is discrediting the polls. Unluckily for them, they can't indulge in the pleasure of pointing to the Prime Minister's falling ratings in their propaganda campaign. If their own stocks were not so low, according to the polls, and if they were picking up traction from the disaffected, then that would be a significant propaganda tool that Portia is slipping. So, interestingly, the PNP benefits from the JLP's publicly expressed scepticism over this poll, for what would be embarrassing to the PNP can't be used by their political opponents.
The poll results should actually be more disturbing to the JLP than it is to the PNP, whose leader is experiencing the fall in popularity. The poll results show that Portia's fall is not fatal and that she could, as it were, be caught before she lands on the ground. She just has to hit the road and crank up that charismatic magic all over again. The JLP is hoping that will not work this time and that people would wake up to the fact that hugs, kisses and promises can't build a country.
But, I have never held the view that politics is about rational argumentation and reasoned debate. It is about polemics, histrionics, blindsiding, propaganda, spinning, emotional manipulation, Machiavellianism, alliance-building, money-spending-and who can do that better. I am being merely descriptive, not prescriptive.
I believe the JLP is going to get top-class professional help to market Bruce Golding. The JLP will be taking no chances with Portia. They have been out in the wilderness too long and they feel they have enough 'goods' on the PNP, plus the natural weariness of people after 17 years of PNP rule. The stakes are high. The JLP is not as aggressive on some hot public issues as they could be if people like James Robertson, Daryl Vaz and Bobby Montague had their way. These young Turks are politically tougher and more risk-taking than Golding. Golding is still depending on smooth argumentation, flawless logic and the force of reason. Those fellows are street-smart fighters who believe in taking no prisoners and in not engaging in sophistry.
Timidity
When Portia hits the road and people start to warm to her, Golding will have to listen to these fellows more and lose some of what some insiders call his timidity or "pandering to the middle class".
We in the media, though, can't use the tactics of the politicians. We can't dispense with reason, argumentation and logical analysis. Most of all, we cannot let political affiliation or association cloud our judgement.
Amidst the sound and the fury-often signifying nothing-and in the heat of the fight for the power and the glory, someone must ask whether the economic strategies of the two parties are really enough to take this country out of the social crisis it finds itself in.
As the enlightening new book by the Deputy Director of the Organisation of Cooperation and Development's Development Centre, Javier Santiso, says, "paradise is not on the next corner. Paradise is not in this world. El Dorado was not and would never have been found, either in space or in time." (Latin America's Political Economy of the Possible: Beyond Good Revolutionaries and Free Marketers)
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
