Mark Wignall | Will transparency and integrity be on the ballot?

For Jamaica to have a profound change in direction, especially concerning transparency and integrity, you must have a leader who is serious about transparency and integrity.

Just as important, or even more important, you must have in place a set of people who place high regard on those matters. Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has buzzed his bell. After all, have we not long moved from seeing the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) core supporters as cheering and dancing with the bell and the toll. In the digital age, it is an app enhanced by AI and, to the JLP’s hardcore support, the bell is a chip under the skin.

On to more sober matters. September 3 will be the date of the general election that many have been waiting on and probably many more are simply hoping that it comes, it goes, and the party one favours wins. If it doesn’t, the sun will still come up tomorrow and that Wednesday will pass and we’ll all get a bit older.

The noble objectives that I had highlighted at the beginning of this column are a big ask because, if we are true to ourselves, noise will replace debate. Weeks leading up to a general election are plainly the time when emotions run high and partisanship at the community level across the same table will define current Jamaican elections. Both political parties must be commended for the distance we have trekked in making elections clean in Jamaica. That we got right.

MULTIPLE POLLS

We expect that multiple polls will soon begin to either confirm our suspicions or prepare us for grand disappointments. That said, based on what I see, sense and the extent to which some people see and feel the improvements in their lives, it seems to me that it is the People’s National Party (PNP), the opposition party who must now play catch up.

The governing JLP has the advantage of being in power two terms. The work it did during that time, plus the building development by private sector interests and a small householder adding a room or two creates a nation setting itself up for the better society.

And I am certain that quite a number of developers found ways to short-circuit the process to ensure speed in development approval.

Without working our way into hyperbole, the PNP has little to claw back from the policy ills of the JLP administration. The matter with the Integrity Commission (IC) has never been tested into an election. There is some doubt as to whether sections of the electorate will elevate Holness’s IC issues to other issues like youth unemployment and poor roads.

Which puts to the front what we can see all around us and say we have improved. And, the time seems suitable to attach it to the years since 2016, the days of the JLP.

The JLP can say, that thing you see over there, that improvement in service you used, that happened during our time. I’m sorry but, what did you do? Sounds simplistic, eh? It is, however, one of the kernels of party politics at the retail level.

WHAT IF GOLDING WERE PM?

I am certain that at the moment when Mr Holness announced the dates of Nomination Day and the election, the word ‘destiny’ probably got stuck in his mind for more than a moment. The destiny I am referring to is the more personal one. Something of the order of Bruce Golding in the late 1990s.

A wave was coming for Bruce Golding to chart a new politics in 1994 but Bruce not so skillfully avoided what he saw was much bigger than he was. I am not so certain that Mark Golding sees his race to September 3 as meaning more than he must be the political and leadership saviour of the PNP. If Mark Golding fails to secure 32 seats on September 3, dawg nyam PNP supper.

Should there be a PNP loss and Mark Golding must go off somewhere to sing a dirge, the PNP will be forced to revert to its once-vital bits and pieces where only the economically strong will survive. To those who see foolish interest in skin colour, rest assured that Golding will take his light skin hue with him.

Should Golding lose on September 3, he will not really lose. He never had power in the first place so, if all he could muster was 31 seats, he simply failed to win. He will still have to go home, though, after he has a tense meeting with one weak candidate on the bigger roster.

But, what if Golding secures more seats than Andrew Holness and his team. That would automatically make him prime minister. What is it we know about Mark Golding now that would properly inform us about him as a future PM?

Those who know him, especially the PNP-connected, speak of his integrity. Many of those in the JLP do not speak highly of Golding and the time of the financial meltdown in the mid-1990s. I believe that, should Golding fall on the right side of luck and secure a win, he will be a good PM because many in the society will be holding his fingers to the same fire that he lit around Holness.

Which would mean that Andrew Holness would be opposition leader. I suspect that is not a position that fits into the special destiny he envisions.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com