This is the season where much sense will be diverted into boredom and loads of nonsense will be elevated to heated political passion, all in an effort to ensnare us and prompt us to vote on December 29 for either the devil or the other one said to be his twin brother.

From various platforms, there will be those who will champion benevolence, but in reality they are mostly predators seeking proximity to the public purse. Truth, sanity and reason will be swamped by an excess of moronic one-liners, and sadly too much of the idiocy will be bought by a people still too far removed from their constant need to be led by circus performers.

Operating in an environment where hopelessness and disillusionment for too many have been the hallmarks of our development for the last 40 years and the educational system has provided a production line of huge numbers of functional illiterates, the well educated, intelligent politician will be well warned to leave his brain at home in this election campaign.

As he leaves his house in the mornings to hit the campaign trail, he should long have curried his goat, embellished his pocket and entertained the thoughts of spouting all of what he believes can be sold to those made gullible by a broken polity, all to ensure that his evenings have been “productive” ones.

“How yuh mean seh tings nah go nice again,” said a man in his late 30s in responding to me who had, a minute before, rubbished a PNP radio advertisement which had a catchy rhythm backing up words which stated that “If yuh waan tings fi nice again, vote PNP.”

“Yeh, man,” he continued. “Tings a go nice. Wi can keep dance all till 6 a mawning.” I groaned and encouraged the discussion of another subject.

Quite apart from the fact of an ill wind gathering strength off the Western European coast and churning its way in our economic direction, the fact is, those who fall under the category of perennially unemployed will be targeting the ruling JLP as the nearest cause of their misery.

If jobs have materialised, someone has skilfully hidden the open manifestation of that most pressing need. In addition, most of the political diehards whom I have met have been tearing at their own party, the JLP, for not providing them with work.

“That’s the problem with people like you,” I said as he complained that his party’s constituency machinery had not been helping him. “You expect the party you are culturally and tribally attached to to take out its breasts and give you milk.”

“No, a nuh so it go, Missa Mark. Mi can fin’ a likkle work now an den, an mi nah starve, as you know. Weh mi a seh is election a come up and nutten nah gwaan fi mi now. Yuh want tell mi seh dem cyaan gimme a likkle a di work weh a gie weh! Mi nah vote and nuff a mi JLP fren dem nah vote!”

In addition to the need to solve the pressing unemployment problem confronting Jamaicans from every angle across this country, is the deplorable state of our road network. I can see the PNP ad now, if it is not yet out there.

“Fi more dan two year dem have the $35 billion fi fix road. Look pan di road dem near yu! Yuh si any road fix? But dem fine di time fi use up di money fi fix up dem office with nice, pretty furniture while di road dem mash up an ugly. An dem did try fi hide it until wi force dem fi buss it out! Wi cyaan trus dem but yu can trus wi fi deal wid di road dem because yu seet aready. Vote PNP!”

As much as the employment rate can be shrouded in fancy statistics and be not openly visible especially to those gainfully employed, the deplorable state of our roads cannot be hidden. Usually an incumbent administration would have had time to plan for a re-election bid by scheduling national road repairs to have its maximum impact on those who are headed to the polls.

In this instance, one leader had to depart at a time totally unplanned for. Another leader had to be hastily reshuffled to the top of the deck without even the sound of a bad card getting itself bent and flimsy in the middle.

At the beginning of 2011, the plan for the JLP would have been elections in the summer of 2012. Then the sudden leadership transition – in recent times – effected in a flash. The plan for road repairs at elections is nothing to be proud of. It ought never to have been an election ploy.

The fact that the JDIP funds have been seemingly more involved in the Palisadoes project than road repairs islandwide, and then it turned out that where it was “loudly” spent while the people were made conveniently “deaf” was fixing offices for the operational office (NWA) will send a message to many potential voters that not only have their roads not been repaired, but in the process, they were duped.

Personally, although I am prepared to give my vote to the JLP, which I believe has the better leader at this time and the more coherent vision, although it is still too steeped in its sordid past, I am very disappointed at the pace of road repairs which should have happened under the JDIP funding.

If we allow ourselves, it was the PNP’s Bobby Pickersgill, then Transport and Works Minister in the days leading up the election of 2002 who had proclaimed that “Jamaica will be pothole-free by 2003.” I voted for the PNP in the 2002 elections, not because I believed the political nonsense of Bobby Pickersgill, but simply because I could not vote for a Seaga-led JLP.

At that time though, the PNP government had been fixing the roads because there was no urgency involved in, or any attempt to contemplate, leadership change.

The PNP being in Opposition can make empty promises and issue statements from the political podium, because it is pretty much among the crowd where booing is fashionable. During its time between 1989 and 2007, it had as many bouts of corruption as there were rotations of the moon.

The difference, as captured by many Jamaicans I have met and spoken with, is that “PNP mek wi eat some a di money”, while “JLP nuh share nutten”.

observemark@gmail.com