If we should assume that the widespread perception of poor performance by the present administration is a bitter pill that we will have to swallow for some time yet, then the very thought that such a performance may force us to look to the opposition PNP is enough to make me want to overdose on bitter pills.

As I write, Finance Minister Audley Shaw has not yet made his Budget presentation. Arthur Williams, the junior minister in the finance ministry, has said the first IMF test has been passed, but Dr Wesley Hughes, permanent secretary in the finance ministry, has said it will be weeks before we know if we have passed the IMF test. On that basis, we wait with bated breath to see if ‘Man-a-Yaad’ Shaw can steady the JLP ship of confusion.

By now, of course, you will have known that Mr Shaw is not good at giving bad news, so it is my view that anything he says will sound good and upbeat, and done to the fist-thumping of the JLP crew.

In assessing the performance of the Government, we have long moved beyond the ‘how-did-it-get-to-this’ stage. Good sense and a penchant for maintaining one’s sanity impel us to accept that the JLP administration has made a boo-boo of just about every area of importance in national life in Jamaica. Many of its missteps have been managerial and administrative ones and seemingly surreptitious tangents designed to satisfy secretive and infernal ends. Many of those can hardly be said to have befallen the JLP Government as a direct result of the global recession.

The idea of ‘open government’ anywhere in the world is simply that – an idea, with very few roots in reality. In more developed societies, such as the USA, this is even more the case, but the irony is whereas those countries have been able to satisfy a certain minimum on the service-delivery scale to its citizens, huge percentages of those populations will tend to believe that whatever it is their governments are doing behind cloistered, secretive walls, much of it is to the benefit of the nation, while shenanigans such as those related to, say, the war in Iraq, are simply the downside to, and the price to be paid for, democracy and the dark side of capitalism.

To the JLP’s credit, it could make the claim of unfair criticism, after all, what we have been doing is comparing 18 1/2 crocus bags of tough, PNP jackass corn with two and a half bags of the same commodity made by the JLP. The JLP would ask that for a fair comparison to be made with the PNP, the nation needs to spend at least 10 years eating its own commodity.

The question is, how much jackass corn does one need to eat to know that it won’t get any better? The nation does not have the teeth for much more of it.

While the JLP administration is still struggling to define its role in the national conundrum atop which it proudly sits, the opposition PNP is flat broke and can barely find the funds to finance even a low-profile by-election. At the last count, the party was somewhere in the region of $50 million in the red. The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from that is, it should not come as a surprise that the party which ran down Jamaica from 1989 to 2007 is the same party which ran its books into the red.

I suspect, though, that the reality is the PNP overspent in chasing down the JLP in the months leading up to the September 2007 election and eventually blew its gaskets. All political parties go broke immediately after an election, but the one which wins has a magical way of replenishing its coffers. The advantage that the PNP had after the 1989, 1993, 1997 and 2002 wins collapsed after its razor-thin loss in 2007. For it to mount any meaningful challenge to the JLP, it will have to beg the big boys for funding. If the perception favours a loss for the PNP, it will end up with bags of cents instead of wads of cash.

For that reason, the PNP can make noise for now, but it cannot go too far and get called out on its own bluff.

Can the PNP chance an election now?

If we should track the post-independence history of election turnouts in Jamaica, we see a definite pattern of voter apathy. That apathy has grown as increasing percentages of the population become aware of the three-card act perpetrated by what Bruce Golding in his ‘new and different’ days in 1995 referred to as the elite club, the PNP/JLP nexus.

The era of large turnouts saw the following voter turnouts: 1962 (72 per cent); 1967 (82 per cent); 1972 (78 per cent); 1976 (85 per cent); 1980 (86 per cent); and 1989 (78 per cent).

As the two-term syndrome was not seen to have had the desired effect of radically changing the lives of huge numbers of those in the society, many in the middle class jumped off the voting wagon as decreasing percentages of the enumerated population actually placed votes.

In the era of small turnouts, smaller numbers of the population handed the country to the PNP as Seaga’s leadership of the JLP locked off its marketability and ability to win. Turnouts were as follows: 1993 (67 per cent), 1997 (67 per cent), 2002 (59 per cent) and 2007 when the JLP won, 60 per cent.

The problem facing the PNP is that since the 2007 win, the list of registered voters has moved from 1,226,214 to 1,519,996, an increase of 183,782 or 15 per cent.

That increase is of utmost importance to the PNP as a party in opposition, as significant percentages of that number of likely voters would have been either wooed, pampered or convinced by whatever means by the party with the funds to do so. My bet will be on the JLP, as the JLP’s general secretary Karl Samuda is the field marshal at that business.

Although increasing numbers of the voting age population are being enumerated, many do so because it provides them with a national ID card. Even though lesser percentages of an increasing enumerated population actually vote, the party that is seen as the direct link to that enumeration begins with a distinct advantage.

First, the councillor and the caretaker or MP would have an intimate profile of the likely voter. The more organised party, that is, the one with the cash — in this case the JLP — would have ensured that higher percentages of those in traditional JLP PDs and EDs are enumerated. Second, with lower overall turnouts, the party with the finances could afford to cuddle its base with cash, kind and ‘bullo wok’ simply because the PNP, suffering the same decreases, couldn’t afford to ‘patrol’ and solidify its base.

I disagree with colleague columnist Michael Burke when he said in his column last Thursday that the PNP is traditionally better organised than the JLP. To my mind, the PNP’s organisational ability only outdistanced the JLP’s because of the PNP’s longevity in power coupled with the cold history of Eddie Seaga as JLP leader. Michael should have travelled to North East St Ann on by-election day in 2001 and to West Portland at the time of the famous by-election and he would have witnessed political organisation at its peak (banks of computers, intranet, rolling stock with runners, helicopter) with the JLP cantering home as winner on both occasions.

JLP has money for ‘Bullo Wok’

The Government has US$400 million which it got from China for road building and maintenance. It has not yet been determined just how much of this will eventually return to China, what with the connections of contractors and sub-contractors.

We are a begging state and our politics has fully accepted that Jamaica strutting on the world stage as a mendicant while reggae music is being sold from under us, our Blue Mountain coffee is being watered down in parts of Asia, and Usain Bolt, our last lifeline, is the essence of our cultural destiny.

In 2001, during the period leading up to the North East St Ann by-election, the PNP Government unleashed an orgy of roadwork in the constituency as it would in the days leading up to the general elections of 2002. As Dr Omar Davies later admitted, when he thought others should not have been listening, the PNP spent excessively in the months leading up to the 2002 elections in its bid to win.

Politicians in Jamaica operate with a certain conviction that the people are fools, so once an election is announced, based on the decreasing number of people who actually vote, there are basically three things they have to do.

First, they unleash ‘bollo wuk’ in critical constituencies and ensure that it is widely publicised via TV, the newspapers and radio. Second, their party workers and those close to the base support are easily made satisfied by ‘care packages’ and other goodies.

Third and most important, with the hardcore support diminishing even as the overall turnout follows a similar path, any party that can muster up the cash to strategically buy about three per cent of the turnout, approximately 25,000 voters, will win the elections. It is by no means cheap, but it is highly effective. Just ask those who have repeated their wins.

That the JLP won the 2001 by-election in North East St Ann in the face of PNP road works in the constituency told us much more about the JLP’s organisation and its understanding of how to outwit the PNP at its own game than it did about the PNP’s tired old tricks.

Is Energy Minister Robertson spent?

At this time there is not a single country in the world where energy as a main item is not a priority in that nation’s present and immediate future.

While it is fairly well accepted that the oldsters in the JLP are in their political dotage, Energy Minister James Robertson is in his 40s and is filled with energy. As a JLP deputy leader, he has received wide respect in strict party terms.

The question is, what is he doing about energy, what is he addressing in his role as energy minister, and what does he understand of the intricacies about the energy ministry?

Said one online commentator, a highly trained Jamaican engineer living in Canada (not surprising), “For Jamaica to experience sustainable economic development it first needs an energy-efficient and industrial economy from which to grow and develop. This requires diversification, modernisation and then to be integrated into the user industries such as bauxite, alumina, cement and limestone. There is no need for bauxite, cement and PetroJam to be operating their own separate power plants. This stand-alone energy sector should be providing all industries with their needs for electricity, LNG/CNG, steam, diesel, gasoline and LPG.

“This will provide the scale and efficiencies that will result in reliable low-cost energy to drive industrial development. There is no reason Jamaica cannot do what other small states like Singapore, Hong Kong and Panama have done in global logistics. This obviously requires the integration of multimodal transport, including ports, highways, railways, airports, pipelines, telecoms and electricity networks.

“Unfortunately, I do not see Transport Minister Mike Henry and Industry Minister Karl Samuda being the drivers behind such a development. They don’t have the fire in their bellies nor the appetite for projects of this scale and complexities. We need some younger ministers to drive it.”

My point exactly!

But was not the young, energetic James Robertson placed there to do what the old dinosaurs could not do? What has he done? What has he said about what he has done? So far, zero; no energy from him.

If we can dig him out of the same primordial ooze into which the dinosaurs have naturally melded, maybe he can give us some answers.

observemark@gmail.com