Learn your lessons well

Chester Francis-Jackson, Contributor

After a hotly contested general election which saw an administration mired in scandals and swamped in colossal arrogance, it became abundantly clear to me that the party had not made the transition from its 18 years in Opposition.

Curiously, however, they went to the polls a full year ahead of its constitutionally due date, expecting applause for lacklustre and shoddy performance in some areas and to be returned to office. For many, after the Dudus-Manatt fiasco, it was patently clear that a Bruce Golding-led JLP would not be returned to power. This led to ever-increasing challenges to Golding's authority as party leader, and even speculation that some would be mounting a challenge to his stewardship of the West Kingston constituency.

With talk of an imminent challenge from within the ranks of the party, and that it was the Americans who forced him out of office, Golding did what many considered a stroke of genius by stepping aside from the leadership of the party. The move was designed to clear the way for the Young Turks who had engineered his own return to the JLP. Golding took his leave, and in so doing poisoned the well with his parting shot. Notwithstanding, the party elders, to their credit, sought to broker a deal with the contending parties for one of the disparaged 'older' members to take up the reins, but it was young Andrew Holness who was anointed by those who coveted the job to which he was elevated.

Now, any astute new leader would have first manufactured a number of appropriate photo opportunities, meeting with senior Cabinet ministers, head of the police and army, business leaders, and sought an international audience or two, while secretly commissioning a poll to determine his party's standing before hinting at, or even talking of, going to the polls.

But not so Holness. And so, it was with an ill-prepared script, based on some notion that the hatred that the middle-class voters had expressed for Portia Simpson Miller would be enough to see him ride a groundswell back to Jamaica House, that Holness backed himself into an election corner. Holness never seems to have heard the saying, 'Never believe your own public relations'. If he did, he decided to pay it scant regard and went full speed ahead into an election campaign for which he and his party were obviously ill-prepared.

Lack of preparation was one issue, but heading into an election campaign where your negatives far outweigh your positives and your junior partners with a history of intemperance become the tail wagging the dog, then that speaks to another level of suicidal arrogance. That led to the PNP solidly trouncing the JLP and banishing them to the bleachers.

G2k biased

If anything, by its very word and deeds, the G2K demonstrated that it was a rabid organisation of raving zealots incapable of applying logic to any given situation. They are instead disposed to seeing everything through green-tinted lenses. And convinced as the leadership of that organisation was of their fingers being on the pulse of the electorate, the JLP and G2K were clearly all set to play snakes and ladders, while the electorate was ready to play ball with the PNP.

The end result was the JLP got a very nasty 'naw-look lick' from its opponent - the blow so devastating many are still in a state of shock. It was a clear case of the 'mi and mi neighbour' syndrome, but this time around, mi and mi neighbour made sure it was one term for Labour, compared to the 2007 election, when the JLP won by a 3,000-victory margin. This time, the PNP won with a near 60,000-vote margin. There were many predictions as to the outcome of the actual polls:

Edward Seaga predicted a 34-29 seat victory in favour of the JLP, and this is despite being reminded that in 2007 he was on record as saying Don Anderson was the "only pollster of note", and that Anderson's poll findings had the PNP ahead by a four per cent margin, and on a seat-by-seat count had the PNP winning in 28 seats and leading in another 12.

James Robertson initially predicted a 40-seat landslide for the JLP, but revised his prediction to anywhere between 28 and 38 seats for the JLP.

A dear friend and colleague predicted a blowout for the JLP, voicing that Jamaicans would never vote to elect Portia Simpson Miller to head this county.

Simpson Miller herself confided that based on her own experience and the response she had been getting on the election campaign, she did not see her party picking up less that 40 seats.

Simpson Miller was not alone in her 'not less than 40 seats' prediction, as Phillip Paulwell predicted it would be a 40-seat majority, with the proviso that many JLP party bigwigs would be booted out of office. He would not reveal this for fear of putting them on notice.

Businessman Steve Ashley predicted that sitting MPs Dr Christopher Tufton, Bobby Montague, Clive Mullings and Franklin Witter would all lose their seats, while newcomers Paula Kerr-Jarrett, Dr Saphire Longmore, Danville Walker, and the recycled Joan Gordon-Webley would all come up short.

There were predictions that saw Andrew Holness falling by the wayside, but this was tempered by others who countered that it needed a stronger candidate to achieve this, but for many close to the PNP, a victory was never in any doubt!

JLP rejected

And so it is that after a two-month stint in the nation's highest political office, which was hardly time to distinguish himself, Andrew Holness was unceremoniously booted out. The legacy of his predecessor proved too much of an albatross around his neck, not to mention a number of candidates that their constituents saw as undesirables and quite unfit and unpalatable, even for diehard supporters!

Now, the post-mortems will be long in coming, but the JLP and the PNP should both be very wary of whose advice they take, as those who predicted a JLP landslide cannot be the same ones administering the antidote. And as for the pollsters who got it so awfully wrong, they now have their damaged professional reputations to live with.

The JLP must be mindful, how-ever, that it found itself on the wrong side of many of the potent issues, class warfare being one of them. And in seeking to rebuild and reimage, should divest itself of the heavy baggage and sense of entitlement some of its standard-bearers seemed to have acquired once assuming office. They must bear in mind that the electorate is the boss, all offices they held were at the behest of the electorate, and they are temporary custodians of administering the affairs of the country. They were not the new 'backra masters' they thought themselves to be. On the other hand, the PNP would be best advised to take the lessons the electorate dished out to the JLP, as the intention here was not the swapping of black dog for monkey!