Part of the modus operandi of a political party in Opposition is to win political power so it can one day form the government of the day. It does this by scrutinising and sometimes heavily criticising the party in power. It tends not to do anything that will give the governing party any possibility of continuing in power, even if this means subjecting the party to nightmares or doing anything that is expedient to ensure its return to power. The mistake that is often made by the Opposition is that it can become so concerned with its own return to power that it embarks on a self-indulgent obsession that is quite oblivious to the expectations of the electorate. Never mind that the interests of the people get lost in this obsessive drive to win the political prize. And do not mind if principles of truth-telling and integrity have to be sacrificed along the way, for the greater good is to wield power: all other concerns are peripheral to this larger goal.

The PNP today is a classic case of an Opposition party that has become obsessed with a return to power. There is no single agenda to which it is more committed than this. In its zest for power, it has begun to resemble in a sickening way the Republican Party in the United States. The only difference is that the Republican Party, in opposing everything that President Obama says and does, is obsessed with the desire to see that he does not succeed. They seem not to be able to digest any idea of a black president succeeding in the United States. So their opposition is against him personally, in my view, and winning power seems secondary. But the PNP is like them in its single-minded determination to oppose everything the government does in order to undermine it in the eyes of the electorate and so win state power.

In doing so it has began to sound ludicrous and its leader, Portia Simpson Miller is beginning to sound very much like the vacuous Sarah Palin. It is difficult to grasp what the PNP had to gain by boycotting the opening ceremonies of the 31st meeting of the Caricom Heads of Government meeting in Montego Bay. Their explanation that they were acting on moral principles since they believe that Prime Minister Golding is not a fit and proper person to lead the organisation is at best disingenuous and at worst a demonstration of the vacuity of thinking in that once august organisation. So obsessed were they in embarrassing Mr Golding that they could not see the larger picture of what such a meeting in Jamaica meant for the country. For the first time, despite Mr Golding’s egregious actions as the PNP sees them, the UN Secretary General, the head of the OAS and the head of the IMF were in attendance, albeit briefly. We do not know what went on behind the scenes to get these men to attend, but it is clear that they were not going to be deterred by the local politics; that they put principles above any personal positions they may hold which is what the PNP failed to do – in the interest of Jamaica.

If the PNP is ever going to regain political power, it has to do better than what its new-found morality of late suggests. This new morality is devoid of substance because in just over two years it is asking the people to forget what transpired in their almost 19 years of power over the Jamaican people. When they accuse the government of a lack of integrity and transparency in the conduct of governance, they must preface their statements by an acknowledgment, indeed confession, that they had not been too transparent themselves in the ways they conducted the affairs of the country. I acknowledge that it would be political suicide to do this and so the people will have to be the final arbiter in these things. It is inconceivable that people could have forgotten so soon the reason they booted the former government out of office and what life was like for them over the past 20 years. They cannot forget too soon the egregious behaviour of Dr Davies in running fiscal deficits to guarantee the return of his party to power. The lack of transparency in the divestment of government assets is another case in point. Admittedly, the present government has continued this lack of transparency in doing the people’s business and this indicates the persistence of a pernicious disease that needs to be excised from the Jamaican body politic.

It is not for me to tell the PNP or any political party what they should do. But the party has a great deal of work to do in carrying out the recommendations of the Brian Meeks Committee which analysed its post-election defeat in 2007. There is still the stubborn question of its quest for identity with respect to its founding principles. In its scramble for relevance, it is sacrificing cherished principles that once made the party the envy of the Caribbean on the altar of expediency. When the party spokespersons speak, there is no deep philosophical construct that informs the party’s raison d’être; no organising principle that speaks to the integrity of the positions it holds. In other words, there is still the urgent need for the kind of soul-searching that will demonstrate to the Jamaican people that the party is a credible force that can once again be entrusted with power. High shrieks from a political platform are hardly a demonstration of this credibility or of a new morality.

stead6655@aol.com

www.drraulston.com