THE People’s National Party will set out on its Express Bus Tour around the country for two days this week to demonstrate to the Jamaica Labour Party administration that while it enjoys the authority to govern, it is they who have the “people power” now to rule, by virtue of being the most popular political force in the country.

Recent opinion polls confirm this, and have given the PNP reason to decide to give concrete practical street expression to its simmering disapproval of the government’s perceived mishandling of the country, epitomised by the Coke extradition saga, the sense of public disapproval of the Manatt-Coke Commission of Enquiry report, and the poor state of the economy.

Interestingly, there is no corresponding overwhelming sense of confidence within the party as it pursues this mission. The recent WikiLeaks exposé laying bare Peter Phillips’ alleged private and unflattering views about the party’s first woman populist leader and the PNP’s ruinous management of the economy for 18 years, together with the absence of any semblance – up to this point – of a credible and convincing plan for putting the Jamaican economy on the upswing by the creation of jobs and investment opportunities, has robbed it of this. Not to mention its ambivalence (some say hypocrisy) vis-à-vis the dual-citizenship issue, the much talked about dinosaur status of a great many of its front-line shadow Cabinet spokespersons, and the feeling that it has done nothing of substance to capture the imagination of the Jamaican people in the past four years as a party-in-waiting to form the next government.

But in our Westminster-type political system, hardly any of this matters. What is important is that historically, the enduring complex power relationships between the PNP and the JLP require the party without formal power to devise strategies and stratagems of resistance to survive where both parties more often than not are mirror images of each other. What one does is bound to impact on what the other thinks and eventually does.

So now that the electorate has given the PNP a wide enough lead in the popularity stakes, the party in turn interprets this as a call to re-legitimise itself as a rightful – and serious – participant in the governmental process. In this context, whatever may be the analyses to the contrary by the governing JLP, the poll results indicate that the electorate would probably prefer the PNP rather than the governing party to now call the shots.

None of this need surprise us. The narrowing of the gap, after all, between the authority of the current governors and the collective will of “people power” that now rules is obviously mediated by economic factors. The JLP’s offer in 2007 of better management of affairs did prove seductive to many Jamaicans and they in turn yielded largely without intimidation. Now, four years later, many of those same Jamaicans feel that the issues of governance must turn on satisfaction or otherwise with the social and economic policies pursued by the government of the day; the continuing marginalisation of thousands due to unemployment; and the failure of those who govern to deliver as they promised they would on the basis of wise financial husbandry and better public management on the basis of integrity, transparency and honesty.

Since 2007, time and collective experience has placed much of this into perspective, so much so that despite disingenuous talk by the general secretary of the JLP that the PNP’s upcoming Express Bus Tour is designed to deflect attention away from Peter Phillips and his recently acquired credibility problems in the party, it is the PNP that now has the kind of moral authority that the governing JLP and its MPs should really have.

Of course, how the PNP chooses to utilise its newfound power of rulership without governorship in light of its bus tour and beyond is left to be seen. Its insistence on viewing the events of Wednesday and Thursday of this week as a “soft launch” of its general election campaign, tells us that it is not fully ready to do battle with a well-oiled JLP election machine should general elections be called now, and that it is not brimming with the confidence and fresh ideas of a political party certain of its destiny in the hands of the electorate.

And while many worry about the potential for violence during the party’s Express Bus Tour, the fact remains that the PNP as surrogate ruler will be challenged to utilise the weapons in the arsenal of “people power” without subverting the imperatives of governing which civilised society must observe if it is not to disintegrate. Any form of sabotage at this time cannot be in the best interest of a party that in 14 months hopes to govern this country.

If the PNP is not to squander its new-found power from the periphery, it must recognise too that “people power” – or the power of the natural rulers in a democracy – is more than a slogan. It speaks to a logic of democratic politics that is admittedly more easily declared than practised. In the present dispensation in which the party finds itself, democracy has as much to do with substance as with form. This means that while the recent poll results point to popular disaffection from the JLP they do not signal summary rejection just yet of the current governors.

The PNP has an excellent opportunity to use its captive audience in most parishes this week to prepare itself for the future administration of this country. It may not get another opportunity like this again for some serious political education of the electorate towards its version of a more viable social structure and economic hope. The danger, however, is that the thirst for power in the wake of what is seen by some as a “win already” outcome for the PNP in the next general election may just blur the vision of many within the party, and feed the impatience that has always been the bane of power seekers.

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