Keeble McFarlane

In the 1950s, when, as we used to say, the devil was a boy, and RJR was a little boy in short pants, it used to broadcast an extremely popular daytime soap opera called Portia Faces Life. The programme was about the experiences of a young woman growing up in a quite different society, but the situations nevertheless resonated quite strongly among our people.

And today, a week after the PNP delegates spoke their piece, loud and clear, in that admirable exercise in democracy, it is the turn of today's real-life, flesh-and-blood Portia, to face life after the euphoria demonstrated by those delegates and affirmed by her parliamentary colleagues a couple of days later. Before we consider what lies ahead, let us not forget that she has much to celebrate - for one thing, she has cracked the gender barrier at the country's highest level, and just in time to mark International Women's Day, which occurs next Wednesday.

And she falls into a firm tradition in this country's seven decades of modern, democratic politics. People have made much of her humble origins and limited formal education. Well, she has nothing to feel embarrassed or ashamed about. She is in good company - Norman Manley was the exception, not the rule, in his generation. Very few Jamaicans of that era and of similar modest origins were able to secure the kind of education he did. Many of the prominent figures of those early struggles had very little, if any, formal education past elementary school.

Consider Bustamante, St William Grant, OGA Coombs, Isaac Barrant and others, whose lack of higher education did nothing to blunt their astute reading of the conditions which affected their compatriots, nor their subsequent actions to do something about the situation. Hugh Shearer, gifted with a sharp and shrewd mind, graduated from the celebrated St John's College, which produced many who became serious figures in Jamaica's early days as a democracy. But even though it had high standards, it was nothing more than a high school. And it's not widely known that while Michael Manley attended the London School of Economics, he never graduated. That didn't affect his formidable intellect or his comprehensive grasp of world conditions.

The challenges that lie ahead for Ms Simpson Miller are quite daunting. When you have to spend two-thirds of your annual budget just to service your external debt, you don't have a lot of room to tackle the very real and very serious problems which face you. When you have to borrow money to pay civil servants, current bills or even to patch potholes, your possibilities are extremely limited.

When your society is a severely wounded one, carrying on its shoulders the overwhelming burden of murder and mayhem; when people live under a constant blanket of fear and uncertainty; when daily living for the great majority is a constant exercise of brinkmanship; when children face a bleak future without any assured prospects of gainful employment, it is very hard to assure yourself of a good night's sleep.

But Ms Portia has been in the political trenches a long time - since she was a teenager in a rough area of the capital city - and understands many of those problems only too clearly from first-hard experience. And clearly her forte has been bringing together disparate elements to work together for a common goal. Hanging over her head, too, is the spectre of a looming election - not more than a couple of years away - in which a reinvigorated JLP could terminate the PNP's stranglehold on Jamaica's politics after so many years.

So she has to harness the solidarity her colleagues expressed this week as they affirmed her leadership, focus on a few important priorities for the nation, and figure out how to pull all the necessary elements of the society together to cool the widespread divisiveness, bad blood and national nastiness which has been an enormous impediment to progress. This is even more important than economic improvement, as even large amounts of money can't combat blood-thirstiness and vigilante behaviour as we have seen so many times in recent months.

It is easy, in an atmosphere of social dislocation, murder, brutality and violence, to miss some important aspects of national life in this extremely stressed society. The vote last Saturday was conducted in a professional and disciplined manner, and no one has been able to come forward and question the result. Politics in the 70 years of Jamaica's modern history sometimes take on aspects of a blood sport (literally as well as figuratively!) and is often ragged, disorganised and harum-scarum. But it has always been, most definitely and decisively, democratic. Remember that.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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