Poor record for political third parties

Stacy-Ann Smith, Gleaner Writer

LONG BEFORE the labour unrest of the 1930s gave birth to the People's National Party (PNP) and long before Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944, Marcus Garvey presented the first election manifesto to Jamaicans.

In 1929, on the platform of his newly formed People's Political Party, Garvey put forward an agenda that was described as highly progressive and way ahead of its time.

According to Garvey scholar Professor Rupert Lewis, the manifesto stopped short of calling for political independence from Britain.

"But I think one of its most important programmes was the call for land reform. And the land reform issue was a very radical step because Jamaica was a series of plantations," said Lewis.

Then there was the bold plan for education as far as to the tertiary level for every interested Jamaican.

failure for garvey

But with only five per cent of the population owning the right to vote, Garvey failed to win a seat in the Legislative Council and his PPP faded into obscurity.

Nine years later at the height of the labour unrest of 1938, a group of Garveyites and other intellectuals formed another political party and convinced Norman Manley to be its leader.

The Bustamante-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) emerged a few years later in 1943 and together with the PNP, they have dominated the local political landscape ever since.

But throughout the past six decades, the same resolve and demand for change that gave rise to the PNP and JLP, the same need for change have fuelled the emergence of other political parties.

Troy Caine is a political historian: "The first third party in 1944 when we had the first general election under the new constitution, Jamaica Democratic Party, was really a businessman's party who had no attraction to either the PNP or the JLP," said Caine.

And there have been many such efforts by different interest groups, some like the Farmers Party in the 1955 elections - drawing closer to success than others.

Including Garvey's party, which was resuscitated in 1962 only to fade again shortly after, dozens of third parties have emerged since Independence.

Sources disagree as to the exact number, but there is enough evidence to point to at least 45.

Of that number, only two have fielded candidates in multiple elections - the Imperial Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated People's Party and the National Democratic Movement.

Neither has managed to get a candidate to Gordon House though, and Troy Caine believes the absence of new political players is one reason.

"Most of the people in modern Jamaica who have formed third parties - and by modern Jamaica I mean in the last say 30 to 40 years, have largely been people who were either part of the PNP or the JLP in one way or the other," he said.

Bruce Golding is possibly the best known example of a third-party man, having walked away from the JLP to lead a brand new NDM in 1995. Armed with a new and different message, backed by millions in campaign donations from the private sector, a confident Golding contested the 1997 polls and lost, badly.

But ballots cast for the NDM meant fewer for some JLP candidates.

"Although the NDM did very badly in the 1997 election, there were a few NDM candidates that caused JLP candidates to lose their seats - at least four or five that I can remember," said Caine.

Little consolation, though, for the Movement which lost its most prominent leader when Golding stepped down in 2002 to return to the JLP.

To date, no third-party candidate has been able to win a seat and third-party politicians say the obstacles are many and complicated.

'hard work'

Betty-Ann Blaine leads the 16-month-old New Nation Coalition.

"Initially, it is groundbreaking and hard work. You have to set up a structure, you have to get a members' base going, you have to get the message out and then you have to win hearts and minds. And all of these things require resources," she said.

Blaine's foray into politics dates back to the NDM in the 1990s and later, the United People's Party in the early years of the last decade.

These days, she's teaming up with the NDM once again for an alliance both parties hope will yield greater results.

NDM General Secretary Michael Williams said they have learned some lessons, among them, the importance of reaching the people at the grass roots.

"We didn't build the base of the party. We did not go down into the base, explain to the people. Political education is critical," Williams said.

That base has to be wide enough and held together by a shared vision, an ideology that can be sold effectively by a strong leader. Think N.W. Manley and the intellectual middle class or Bustamante and the militant working class.

"To position yourself in Jamaica's politics as a viable third party, you really have to be doing or saying something that either the PNP or the JLP is not doing or saying and this, to me, has been their greatest dilemma," said Caine.

It is a dilemma that's compounded by wary donors who prefer to bet on a sure thing and an entrenched two-party system that has politicians who would rather cross the parliamentary floor than take their chances as independent candidates.

But while current third parties seem unlikely to have much impact in the next general election, political analysts still believe the right conditions could make the difference down the road.