THE Jamaican election, as any election anywhere else, affords an opportunity to examine political trends as well as social attitudes. Some observations are unsurprising and in retrospect the results of last week were mostly unspectacular.

Some observations, however, merit closer analysis since they indicate that Jamaicans are ready for some fundamental changes in their political culture.

Before the election, pollsters of all persuasions predicted that the results would have been very close. Many declared that the results were too close to call a winner before the counting of the votes. Yet the result was a convincing, lopsided electoral win for the People’s National Party and even the BBC declared the results within an hour of the closing of the polls.

The principal observation here is that all pollsters, like economic forecasters, are not a reliable group and their presumed skill has a low reliability factor. At best their science, given its penchant for misleading, is nothing more than an acceptable form of pseudo-science.

More important is the manifestly sharp decline in political participation. If initial reports of a voter participation rate of less than 50 per cent are supported by the final figures, then this would be the lowest turnout ever, except for 1983 when the PNP boycotted the election and less than three per cent of eligible voters went to the polls.

Jamaica has a long history of enthusiastic voluntary participation in elections. More than 58 per cent of eligible voters made it to the polls in the first national election held under Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944. Between 1949 and 1959 the voting percentage hovered in the high 60 per cent.

Almost 73 per cent voted in 1962. The referendum of 1961 that resulted in Jamaica’s withdrawal from the West Indies Federation was considered to have very low participation at just above 60 per cent. By contrast, the election of 1967 saw more than 82 per cent voting.

The decades of the 1970s and 1980s attracted the highest percentages of voters. Although the election of 1980 was considered the year with the high-water mark in political violence, slightly less than 87 per cent of eligible voters cast their votes that year. General violence per se was not an inhibiting factor in voting. Beginning in the decade of the 1990s, however, there has been a perceptible decline in voter participation.

Part of the decline in voter participation resulted from two developments in the economy and society during the past two decades. The first was the collapse of the national economy and resultant decline in trade union organisation. In Jamaica, as in Barbados, Belize, and Guyana (although not in Trinidad), the major political parties drew their base strength from their trade union affiliates. The union base was crucial in producing voters on election day. Fewer union members equalled fewer potential voters.

The second development was the creation of a number of notorious garrison communities tied closely to the two major political parties. While the garrisons established party hegemony within the specific enclave, the overall result was to discourage non-enclave independents from overt political participation. In the long run, those militarised, quasi-independent garrisons undermined the broader authority and respectability of the Jamaican political process.

Parties may be of the opinion that garrisons serve their ends, but the overall cost may be higher than the local benefit as independents turn away from the major parties and withdraw from the voting process.

Several other factors emerged or coincided to produce the electoral result of 2011. Some are integral aspects of the local political culture while others may be no more than transient factors connected to this particular time and its peculiar circumstances.

For someone whose family was steeped in education, Bruce Golding demonstrated uncharacteristic ineptitude at understanding Jamaican politics, society and culture. His appointment of a governor general manifested either a callous disregard or ignorance for protocol and administrative history.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the individual presented as governor general. Rather, the fault lies in the symbolism of the position which merited an explanation of the proposed change and a constitutional amendment.

By the constitution under which Mr Golding served he should have realised that the governor general symbolically represented the queen of England who serves not only as titular head of state, but also as the nominal head of the Church of England. Even if church and state no longer maintain the intimate alliance of old times, symbols remain extremely important.

Elizabeth the First was supposed to have confessed that London was worth a sermon, and her French peer, the Huguenot, Henry of Navarre, declared that Paris was worth a mass as both tactfully navigated the treacherous age of religious dissention and bigotry of the 16th century.

The handling of the Coke affair illustrated a haughty disregard for the intelligence of the ordinary Jamaican. Politicians who lie publicly are usually punished at the polls. Of course, Mr Golding removed himself from public judgement before the election, but the distasteful affair and the tragedy of Tivoli Gardens lingered on and instilled a punitive mood among the electorate.

If Mr Golding could no longer be held politically accountable, then his party would. Clearly the JLP paid some price for the almost year-long national agony of the Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke affair. Moreover, the prolonged official inquiry of the event showed that Golding was not as good a manager as he thought himself to be.

Holding the national election during the holiday season between Christmas and New Year bordered on the maliciously idiotic. That week should be a time of feasting, merriment and deserved recovery. It should have provided a short respite from the weighty and contentious manner of politics. An election during this universally accepted down time deserved a punitive response on the part of the electorate.

Some merely refused to vote. Others voted against the responsible party. Such a response should have been factored in during the deliberations to call national elections. But then, maybe voters are not considered seriously when taking such decisions.