Undoubtedly, there will be continuous assessments of the 2011 election campaign, strategies, and election-day activities that led to a fitting end to the most exhilarating Jamaican election in memory. That notwithstanding, we must be bold enough to call a spade a spade. For although the elections have come and gone, and we hold different political views and may be tempted to defend our prejudices, it shouldn’t be that we become so sequestered by the power of our political predisposition that we cannot exercise fairness of thought or give praise where it’s due.

It is within this context that this column, even at this late stage, extends heartfelt congratulations to the People’s National Party on its impressive victory. Defeating a one-term incumbent by winning 42 of 63 seats is significant. Regular readers of this column would recall the stoicism with which I treated Golding’s resignation and Andrew’s rise to the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party and ultimately to the prime ministership. I felt that the circumstances that preceded both events were grossly offensive to our collective intelligence; I predicted that the consequence of the flabbiness would manifest itself in an inevitable defeat of the JLP, talk about prescience.

Admittedly, there were moments in the campaign when political commentators, unfamiliar with the inner workings of the PNP, expressed concerns. They were concerned about the party’s seemingly awkward approach to the elections. But the deliberateness of the PNP’s actions allowed it to assess and analyse the mood and desires of the electorate, with a view to adjusting its campaign tactics and stratagems to align with the expectations and interests of the people whose support it sought. It is obvious that the PNP followed two distinct, but complementary, strategic paths during the campaign.

To begin with, those familiar with the rigours of “Action Research” will ascribe the PNP’s performance to a key element in Action Research – the ability to adjust in action; political adaptability is always key to winning. Therefore, the PNP’s collaborative approach was intentional and the coordination of its political activities gave it a realistic view of its political target. For instance, the PNP discouraged mass movement of people for spot meetings and opted for home-grown crowds just to get a true picture of the intensity of its parochial support. The PNP then used the intelligence gathered to develop information about the JLP’s strength.

Then, the PNP framed the management and execution of its election campaign around the tenets espoused by Chinese Military General Sun Tzu in his text, Art of War. In this text, Tzu encouraged his generals to “feign incapacity when capable and to feign inactivity when active”. The PNP perfected Tzu’s advice by feigning disorganisation when it was well-organised; and by feigning leadership and resource inferiority when it enjoyed leadership and resource superiority. All this was happening while it stealthily fine-tuned its campaign strategies.

Concomitantly, and as Tzu advised, the PNP calculated the fundamental factors which would either facilitate or hinder victory. It correctly assessed the challenges that come with decisive engagement and extracted a better understanding of the economy of politics. This helped the party to prioritise and plan its spending. The PNP’s use of social media and influential members in the Jamaican diaspora worked to its advantage. It designed a plan of attack and, through its resourceful strength of unity, successfully targeted the JLP leader, its machinery and grass-roots mobilisation plans. However, the PNP manoeuvred and positioned its programmes and activities around the “People Power” theme, thus building awareness among the people that they will be at the centre of its programmes and the televised infomercial closed this deal for the party. It utilised energy and creativity in a timely fashion as it built momentum starting with its bus tours. Additionally, the PNP cleverly juxtaposed its weaknesses and strengths with reality and took advantage of the opportunities that came from the JLP’s mistakes.

In this context, the PNP exploited the JLP’s mistake in calling the elections during the Christmas holidays and elevated the decision to highlight the JLP’s insensitivity towards the people and their traditions. The JLP also miscalculated the extent to which absentee voters would have negatively affected its vote count, particularly among upper-middle class voters who usually travel abroad for Christmas. The decision to hold elections during the Yuletide season, especially in an environment chock-full of “low information voters” was plain stupid.

That aside, although numbers have a bikini-like quality to them, since “what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital”, the results of the 2011 general election confirmed that a significant number of Jamaicans voted, percentage turnout notwithstanding. The PNP received 57,998 more votes than the JLP, and 53.3 per cent of the total votes cast. Context is essential because, while the number of votes cast reflected 52.76 per cent of registered voters, a tabulation of the actual votes shows that the 869,438 votes were the highest number of votes cast in any election in Jamaica, certainly since Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944.

Yet, before we become too precipitate in our analyses of the increased voter registration vis-à-vis percentage voter turnout, we should evaluate the transactional force behind the increase in voter registration, because the compulsory requirement for national identification cards might have influenced the high voter registration. Therefore, it is quite likely that the 52.76 percentage turnout may not be purely attributable to voter apathy as is being bandied about. In the final analysis, the results of the elections confirm that there are lessons to be learned about people power, about governmental excesses, arrogance and the strength of our democracy.

Burnscg@aol.com