The sudden and unexpected resignation of the president of the People’s National Party Youth Organisation (PNP-YO), Damion Crawford, has brought into sharp focus the reality that Norman Manley’s “people’s movement” is having a philosophical, moral and systemic problem. Indeed, the naked truth is that this current Portia Simpson Miller-led party is being seen only as a vehicle to regain state power via a general election. But the potent question that many well-thinking Jamaicans are asking is, after winning the general election, what next?

And there’s the rub, because if one speaks to five members of the party as to what the PNP is all about in terms of governance and management of the economy at any given moment, one is likely to get five different responses. This therefore brings one to the question of whether or not the PNP has a cohesive platform on which some Jamaicans see it as the best alternative or as having the potential to do better than the incumbent Bruce Golding Jamaica Labour Party government on which they can all sit comfortably.

This also brings us to the vexing issue of the so-called Progressive Agenda which for most Jamaicans remains an elusive dream. Why has it taken the party so long to fully expose this “Magna Carta” which some Comrades say has the potential to be the “mother of all manifestos” on the way forward for Jamaica? One party insider told me that one of the reasons the PNP is keeping this seemingly revered document close to its chest is that it does not want the JLP to adopt some of their key plans and projects and thus upstage them. In this vein, does the PNP hierarchy really think that they by themselves can fix Jamaica’s problems without some kind of an all-inclusive approach?

It is worth noting that in his 2010 Throne Speech, Governor General Sir Patrick Allen stressed the need for national consensus building between the two major political parties, namely the ruling JLP and Opposition PNP, if the country is to solve some of its major problems. Increasingly, Jamaicans are demanding that the parties move away from their rabid partisan outlook which has created a kind of Tower of Babel environment wherein too many Jamaicans are speaking in different tongues. This state of tribalism and confusion will take us nowhere close to the Promised Land but to the edge of a man-made abyss.

If the PNP is to be taken seriously by those people who are not diehards but who want the best for their country, then it must first of all go back to its roots embedded in its principles and objectives as espoused by its founders. Michael Manley was right when he said that left to themselves, political parties end up being merely an electioneering machine. People wishing to join the PNP must be prepared to adhere to those principles and objectives, which means that they must not only blindly follow the leader but must be prepared to stand up for those principles and objectives at whatever cost!

In that context, there will be various views contending and here is where the party must put in place the necessary structure and mechanism to ensure that dissension does not automatically mean that such an individual becomes a pariah. Intellectual discourse was once a staple of the PNP; today all one hears is “we gwine win the next election”. It is my view that when the PNP lost the 2007 general election, it was a blessing in disguise for both the party and Jamaicans on a whole. The PNP should have therefore fully accepted the defeat and got on with the business of renewal and repositioning itself in the hearts and minds of Jamaicans rather than having a mindset that it ought to have been still in power.

As a result, the PNP has been very weak in opposition. It needs to revisit its strategies and techniques used after it lost the 1980 general election, enabling it to return to power in 1989 and guaranteeing an unprecedented run of some 18 and a half years. For starters, the Progressive Agenda needs to be unveiled post-haste and taken on an islandwide public education campaign. Additionally, Party President Simpson Miller must with much alacrity present a new set of spokespersons to the people of Jamaica. Right now, the PNP’s shadow cabinet is more shadow than substance. The party cannot hope to attract new blood that can make a difference if it continues to hunker down with the same set of tired old faces that have been there and done that.

No doubt, I will be pilloried by some Comrades for my frank comments but I make no apologies for my current stance because my ultimate interest is not in any one political party but in the people of this country who for too long have, like the Children of Sisyphus, been “rolling rockstone up hillside”. For too long, political parties have spoken glibly about empowering the people when in essence all they are doing is empowering themselves. For too long, politics in Jamaica has been a business for many who seek personal aggrandisement, not emancipating the people from mental and economic slavery.

The PNP as a movement, unlike the JLP that is more of a “political club”, has had within its remit the ability to truly enhance the people’s welfare, but having abandoned its socialist principles and those embedded in its constitution, it has developed a love/hate relationship with the capitalist formula for progress, thus finding itself between the devil and the deep blue sea. The JLP, being an unrepentant capitalist organism, is busy pursuing its top-down approach towards national development which, in the final analysis, has the potential to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Ironically, it is to a socialist giant, China, that the JLP has now turned to for that great leap forward. What a bitter-sweet irony!

The bottom line is that if the PNP is to be taken seriously by that portion of the Jamaican electorate which genuinely wants change, then it cannot be business as usual. The mango might be ripe, but will it be sweet and will it have worms?

lloydbsmith@hotmail.com