Dear Reader,

I am as perplexed as I’m sure many of you are concerning the vulgar rush to election despite the psychosocial and material poverty of the country. It doesn’t matter that the electoral machinery is underprepared for the snap election, or that the social and psychological conditions couldn’t be worse. Early election is good for the Jamaica Labour Party and that’s that! As former Minister of Information Daryl Vaz liked to say, “It’s a done deal”!

The only thing that has changed since the last election in 2007 is that Jamaica has got poorer and more corrupt. The recent IMF report that placed 1.2 million Jamaicans, almost half the population, below the poverty line is merely confirming what we see with our own eyes every day. Poverty is deepening, and expanding to include those Jamaicans whom I describe as the “new poor” – our country’s middle-class who are finding it more and more difficult to survive.

The full and cumulative impact of Finsac, Cash Plus and Olint, on top of the current global and domestic recession, is now apparent. A large percentage of those Jamaicans who helped to turn the wheels of production, however slow, were not only completely decimated by the financial collapse of the 1990s, but their demise led to the simultaneous demise of untold numbers of workers who lost their jobs in the process.

As proud as we are as Jamaicans, the cracks are beginning to appear in open view, and my own more and more infrequent trips to the supermarket tell the tale. Food is out of the reach of many middle-class families, and the merchants are responding by cutting portions and eliminating those expensive items that are prone to stockpiling.

Our “Occupy Half-Way-Tree” served to reinforce the reality. After one day in the streets, we realised that we could easily have opened up a welfare office in the middle of the city. The complaints were steady and covered all ages. I was particularly heartbroken to hear the woes of suffering of the elderly. One old woman told us that her light had been disconnected and she was now living in darkness.

A woman who told us that she would be 61 years old next year said that in all of her life it was the first time that she was going to her bed hungry. “I work as a days’ helper,” she explained, “and when a get di little work as a days’ helper, and when a get di little pay and pay mi rent and pay light, I don’t have anything to buy food.” The young woman approached me shortly afterwards and began crying before she could complete the first sentence. She and I resorted to a make-shift counselling office in a nearby restaurant. The tears flowed as she described the hardships she was facing, including problems with her teenage daughter who no longer attends school because there is no money.

The tragedy of Jamaica’s growing condition of impoverishment is that the poor by and large don’t make the link between poverty and corruption, and even if they do, they feel powerless to change the situation. It is that state of unawareness, malaise and hopelessness that gives our politicians licence to do whatever they want, like calling a snap election in a state of general “unreadiness”.

The Electoral Commission has made it clear that it is not ready for elections. With more than half of the ballot boxes not yet manufactured, I am curious to know what the options are for early election. Even more crucial in my estimation, is the lack of reforms accompanying this undue rush to election.

For a considerable period of time, an assortment of interest groups, including third parties and civil society representatives have dedicated time and effort in working with the Electoral Commission to propose and prepare critical reforms to the electoral system. The proposed reforms would have far-reaching effects on Jamaica’s electoral system, and would go a far way in cleaning up corruption in public and private life.

Included in the reform bill up for debate in Parliament are issues such as permissible and impermissible donors, caps on campaign financing, disclosure of donors, and importantly, increasing the power and capability of the Electoral Commission to apply sanctions through constitutional entrenchment.

To call early election ahead of those critical reforms is inexcusable, if not reprehensible. The reality is therefore, that since the last election, not one single thing has been accomplished to reform critical aspects of the electoral process, in particular the problem of campaign financing.

It is clear to me that those who are rushing to election have no interest in free and fair elections, after all the formula that’s been used in the past has produced good results – garrison safe seats, displacement and intimidation gangs, “turn out the vote community enforcers”, special interest influence, and more – all those mechanisms are intact as the country prepares for another election.

But who cares? Those who should be the upholders of righteousness are either soundly asleep or sleeping in bed with the offenders. Alas!

With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com