Orville Taylor In less than 24 hours, we will go to the polls. I will mark my 'X' but I don't know 'Y'. Believe it or not, the other polls by Don Anderson, Bill Johnson and Ian Boxill suggest that there is a virtual dead heat, closer than the finish between Veronica Campbell and Lauren Williams last week.
As with the women's 100 metres final, we are in suspense and some fear an outcome similar to the men's race where the fastest man in the world and pre-race favourite fell apart and lost. It is little consolation that he admits that he got frightened, because as a Jamaican, he was understandably nervous wi th Gay on his tail. Campbell did not change course, but Powell did.
Almost Nothing to separate parties
Honestly, there is almost nothing to separate the parties, even regarding their manifestos. Both fail with respect to a coherent youth policy our greatest problem is youth crime.
Neither has addressed environmental issues with any conviction, despite crocodiles walking on to people's lawns and massive hotels being constructed in their habitats.
Inasmuch as we live in a hurricane belt, with another system threatening again, 60 elected Members of Parliament (MPs) pussyfooted for three years after 'Ivan' and have not even properly discussed legislation regarding danger zoning and forcible relocation.
This same Parliament, packed with election-drunk 'Labourites' and 'Comrades', dropped both balls on the issue of the commemoration of the bicentenary of the end of the slave trade and on reparations.
While international observers, scholars and other aficionados turned up between 6:00 and 9:00 a.m. on March 25 to see our ancestors finally being put to rest, all parliamentarians were missing.
Indeed, only Pearnel Charles of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) literally turned up at the 11th hour; and the People's National Party (PNP) had a 'more important' private meeting.
Imagine that there is more official recognition and activism in the United States and United Kingdom than in one of the blackest countries in the world, the birthplace of Marcus Garvey.
Two political parties are fighting for this little rock in the sea and are so caught up they lose sight of history.
Garvey's birthday 'tushed' on Friday August 17. Some fanatics think that the first 'P' in PNP means Portia, therefore, for the first time in my recollection, its annual conference had no portraits of its founder or other patriarch.
On the other hand, when the election date was announced, the JLP was so distracted that it did not seem to know that it was its own anniversary. Indeed, only after that information was published in this column did the party's president even mention it.
Marcus Garvey told us of the importance of understanding our past. Drivers you won't stop at all and want to go full speed ahead, look into the rear-view mirror.
On the international scene, we have been missing from the dialogue regarding Mauritania and Darfur. I recall Jamaican trade unionists affiliated to all three major parties in the 1970s and 1980s engaging in the subject of apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Now, their only focus seems to be endorsing parties.
The 1970s and 1980s are so imprinted in the minds of us the post-40 group that at the slightest hint of political violence we get as nervous as certain politicians facing the press.
None of the party leaders has demonstrated the capacity, orperhaps will, to control their supporters. The defacing of political billboards, vandalising of party headquarters, physical assaults and murders have all occurred and continue.
On Wednesday, a candidate's car was shot up. Hopefully, we won't have any idiotic statement that they shot themselves to make the other side look bad.
So out of control are the activists that even the press are fair game. Workers from the lesser-read newspaper were assaulted, while another media vehicle was shot up after the hurricane.
RJR and TVJ reporters and camera crew received unsolicited bottles of water for being exactly where they were placed by the party bigwigs at a recent rally. And the media are constantly being accused of being biased. Speaking of which, I have not forgotten the attacks by gays on another newspaper.
Then, the scandalous behaviour of politicians takes centrestage. It appears that stage madness is the ubiquitous disease. I will not repeat the references.
However, suffice it to say, both parties have been very guilty.
Interestingly, 80 per cent of respondents interviewed think that the political advertisements are over the top and go too far.
Line up the candidates and the parties. Bruce Golding is a backsliding Labourite, who returned like the prodigal son. So is Karl Samuda.
Still, the PNP has its own prodigal in Norman Horne, who, is also a 'tun-back Jamaican' like the Labourite Fakhouries.
Abe Dabdoub still does not seem to have ripened to a bright orange from his green origins; and Rosemarie Shaw and Ian Hayles used to graze in green pastures.
Get out and vote
Despite the ad campaign regarding Golding's association with criminals, only the most hypocritical of comrades would deny that many of them, especially those in garrison constituencies, are similarly linked.
And do not believe tha the PNP has had more scandals than a plastic-bag factory, the JLP is a paragon of virtue. After all, the only former minister and Member of Parliament that has ever been convicted for corruption was Labourite, J.A G Smith II.
By the way, why did Dean Peart suddenly drop his enquiry into the allegations of dishonesty in the parish councils? I have my suspicions. Do you? As I have often said, the colours orange and green mix to produce a dirty brown.
Nevertheless, get out and vote. I certainly will.
Dr. Orville Taylor is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
