BY the end of this day’s exercise, all of the political hype, the impossible promises and the catchy radio and TV ads will mean nothing… to one side, at least.

When the final tally is made, the side which wins will have little to crow about, that is, if nation-building is a priority on its agenda of items. But crow it will, because it has been our long experience that both political parties have as major objectives many things other than building people and taking them into a better appreciation of their boundless possibilities.

For an extended period we have ached for good, decent, competent leaders who are not necessarily angels, but who will give us reason to believe that they have the country’s broader interests in their short-, medium- and long-term plans.

In recent memory we experimented with the messianic in the PNP’s Michael Manley – 1972 to 1980, and from 1980 to 1989 we had no other choice but to side with the cold administrative hand of the JLP’s Eddie Seaga.

In the end we still loved Manley, but in his prioritising the needs between pressing short-term imperatives like housing and social legislation, he somehow forgot laying the groundwork for a firmer springboard for the long-term pursuits. At the end, under his leadership the economy shrank 25 per cent between 1974 and 1980.

Seaga may have wanted to address more of the here-and-now, bread and butter issues, but he first had to undo the enormous socio-economic damage which occurred during the 1970s under Manley. If economic growth was the only electoral calling card, Seaga would have won in 1989, but our people opted for fish heads and the JLP’s illusion that economic growth alone, especially in its lopsided fashion, could take it first past the post.

So we took back Manley, then gave PJ Patterson the nod, and he along with Portia Simpson Miller, allowed the clock to run until 2007. Early in the PNP’s run (in the early 1990s) armchair socialists fumbled badly with the market economy, and with a global economy humming, the PNP seemed to have settled on a model predicated on the basis of borrowing the most, while not quite figuring out how to take advantage of the bustling world economy.

So, after 18 1/2 years the country reluctantly handed the country to the JLP under a Bruce Golding who many of us thought was ready for the biggest, most important seat in the house. For about two years Golding seemingly sat it out and made more unforced errors than was humanly, politically possible.

So now, today, we take another gamble. Will it be JLP or PNP?

For the first time since I began writing (March 1993) I am without a national poll that I am close to or can confidently comment on. The three main pollsters have done their work and, along with my own ‘informed’ gut, it seems to me that the advantage will favour the JLP, but only just.

PNP hoping for a default win

With not much indication that the leadership cadre of the PNP has anything newer and better than what obtained in the 1989 to 2007 period, the PNP is hoping that the JLP’s election campaign promises of jobs, jobs, jobs, which could not have materialised during the worst recession since the great global Depression of the late 1920s to the late 1930s, will take it to another victory.

For the JLP administration which took power in September 2007, it was unprecedented that any government in Jamaica had its electoral win so conveniently clashing with the beginning of such economic turmoil.

By any test, the JLP has done well to have presided over a country without open major social fallout while other countries were on the verge of social implosion. During that time, things which could have gone horribly wrong, like our currency exchange rates, bank lending rates and our net international reserves maintained a stability that belied what was happening on the global landscape.

As we head to the polls today, the JLP has the leadership advantage in that, it is my belief that more people will be willing to ‘give Holness a chance’ than those who will opt for the fully known factor of Portia Simpson Miller.

A seat count of 35 is not an impossibility for the JLP, but it will have to work hard for anything over the PNP’s seat count. It will be a battle down to the wire, although there will be surprises in key seats. As is typical of political parties worldwide, almost all candidates, JLP and PNP, have — prior to this day of reckoning — claimed victory. And at least one pollster will be sorely disappointed.

Today the talkers get separated from the doers. Unfortunately for them, some lazy MPs will get the boot today and, unfortunately too, we will not be able to vouch too strongly for those replacing them. A few MPs on both sides of the political fence will, of course, be fully deserving of their lost seats today.

All they have done since the last election is massaged their highly overblown egos while abandoning their constituents. Today is payback time.

Although I expect the JLP to retain power, am I totally ruling out a PNP win? Well, there are no absolutes in this world and certainly not in politics. What makes a PNP win so difficult for me to see is its almost total reliance on the sins of the JLP while failing to fully enumerate exactly what it would do better than what the JLP has done.

The JLP has had a leadership change, while the leadership of the PNP has remained in a state of torpor. The JLP has a new set of promising candidates, and in terms of sheer numbers, it seems to have outpaced the PNP.

The international lending agencies seem not to have a problem with doing business with the JLP while the PNP leadership has been promising ‘new negotiations’ though the likelihood of that happening should the PNP win seems not to be up as an option for us.

So, go out today and vote. And vote with your brains.

observemark@gmail.com