When rabid religionists criticise so-called atheistic and very brutal regimes like Stalin in what was then the USSR, the Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot, Mao in China and Hitler (he was notionally Catholic) in Germany, they seem to forget that the blood-soaked leaders of these regimes had deified themselves and the ‘way forward’.

In essence, they simply borrowed from the playbook of history by making themselves into gods. They studied the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, the many Islamic Jihads, the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions, the European push into Africa and the ‘New World’ and the resulting genocide.

People become religious and remain so because it is drummed into them from the very day a child says, ‘Mama.’ Think of a Jamaican mother feeding her child. She loves that child so much and as she looks down at it, she smiles and begins to sing, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…’

All of religious teaching actively discourages inquiry and criticism. In respect of that the Bible has a word for it — Blasphemy. In Jamaica, religions drum out their dogma Sunday after Sunday until the minds of the flock are saturated for life.

Party politics follows a similar playbook. Once one is hooked into a party preference, independent inquiry is discouraged. But I go ahead of myself. How does one get hooked?

‘Tradition’ often comes up in poll numbers whenever the follow-up question is asked, ‘Why do you support this party?’ This usually means that the person/voter comes from a household which has always voted one particular way, regardless of the burning issues of the moment.

What initially brought about the loyalty is difficult to research, but it could be housing, the deep divisions brought about by the politics of the 1970s or, for the much older folk (70+), a love relationship with Busta or ‘Daddy’ Manley.

Most youngsters (below 35) who say they always vote for one party on tradition may have another factor supporting that — cluster. They grew up in a geographical area where, for whatever reason, the place was dubbed ‘JLP territory’ or ‘PNP town’. Like religion, if you do not support my party, you are a heretic and, even, evil.

Party workers are much more likely to be women and they are the most fanatic where it relates to party support. Even if I should omit the much more emotional aspect of our sisters, there is a very valid social reason for the strong and unwavering support among this legion of followers.

Most party workers are uneducated and unemployed, and are without saleable skills, but the party gives them ‘respect’ and oftentimes defines them. To the wider society, they are nameless, faceless, and powerless.

Contrast that with party meetings where their like-minded friends show up to greet each other and maybe even get a hug and a ‘hail up’ from the party MP or caretaker and the self-esteem is made complete.

One could argue that such behaviour can be expected from the poor, the voiceless and the powerless many who missed the education boat. If that holds, how do we explain the diehards in the upper sections of the society?

Remember now, a rich Jamaican who owes nothing to politics and politicians can afford to be rudely independent and even highly critical of both political parties. The extent to which we do not see much of this across-the-board criticism from the moneyed class (there are a handful of exceptions) either speaks to a general level of apathy or it tells us that political favours are owed.

The middle class, who are often thought to be the ‘knowledge class’, whatever that means, are oftentimes just as rabidly diehard as the little man at street level. This can be caused by strong philosophical leanings in politics with little space left for any grey areas.

In the end, it comes out like religion, similar to the view that Adventists have of the Catholic church. All who support the other party are evil, the anti-Christ and, they have somewhere in their system, the printed-out mark of the beast.

The poor diehard

I met him in the mid-1980s. He was a driver for a utility company and had just been fired for stealing company property.

He was rabidly PNP and up until the last election he has always voted PNP. “Is only PNP me can vote fah. Mi nuh mad. Whey me a vote JLP fah?” he said.

Last week I asked him if he was pleased with the performance of his PNP. He smiled. “Mi know whey yu a try fine out. Dem can do better, an’ di leader fi talk up di right tings dem. But mi nah switch!” he said.

He is unshakable in his support of the PNP.

In the 1990s, before she died of alcohol poisoning, she would tell me of the many demons in her life. Her father had died and left a nice three-bedroom house for her. It was all peace until a newly deported half-brother showed up.

Six months later, he muscled her out of the house and forced her to be ‘kotching’ with friends. She drank heavily although she had no money. She would do clean-up jobs in bars for a half Q of white rum. On top of that, she was a rabid Seaga supporter.

One day I said to her in jest, “Suppose Seaga cut off yu voting hand. What would you do?”

Her response in very animated fashion?

“Mi use di finga pon mi odder hand an vote fi him same way. A my leader dat!”

The educated diehard

In 1989 when I told my highly educated accountant friend that I would be voting JLP he exploded. “Mark, you are an intelligent man. How can you place a vote for a person like Seaga?”

I told him that I liked how Seaga had brought back the economy from the ruinous times of the PNP’s run in the 1970s. I told him that I was highly impressed with Seaga’s hands-on management of the country’s affairs after the passage of the terribly destructive Hurricane Gilbert in September 1988.

“I still don’t understand you. How anyone sensible can vote for the JLP is beyond me. I have always voted PNP,” he said.

My half-Chinese friend had a master’s degree and he was the proprietor of a small business which was doing quite well. He had always voted JLP and believed that the PNP was much too anti-business. In 1989, in quiet tones he told me, “The country has too many uneducated people and the PNP knows that. They can’t fool me and you. It is just the loud mass that they are interested in because they know they are gullible.”

Then he added, “I take it that you are voting JLP.” I told him yes, and he said, “That makes sense. Only the misinformed rabble would vote for the PNP.”

After the 2002 elections when I told a PNP-connected semi-don based in Kingston that I had voted seven times over the years — four for the PNP and three for the JLP — he said, “You are a confused man. If yu want dollars fi run you have to support one party all di way, an’ mek sure is the winning party.”

The violent diehard

In the years prior to 2003 I had always viewed Tivoli Gardens as an ‘Israel’ surrounded by hostile ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Arab’ territory. I used that reasoning to justify the organisation and the many guns in the hands of Tivoli young men.

In violent flare-ups involving Tivoli and the security forces I always took the side of Tivoli/West Kingston. I did so in 1996, 1997 and 2001.

In 2003, after the police had shot a man in West Kingston, women and children literally ‘raided’ the Denham Town Police Station and pelted it with stones. The night I visited I was shocked to see policemen in the station carrying out their duties while all around them were smashed windows and huge rocks — in the passageways, the bathroom and the general office area. I began to view things differently.

In 2005, I appeared on Cliff Hughes’ TV programme Impact and criticised the new JLP leader Bruce Golding for the ‘bangarang’ comments he had made in support of his constituents in Spanish Town.

A few days later, the police shot and killed a notorious West Kingston gunman called ‘Zion Train’. In response, residents from Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town held a demonstration in front of the Denham Town Police Station.

I foolishly visited the area and came upon the raucous demonstrators. As some of the younger ones began to heckle me and push me around, hitting me on the head, jamming edges of their placards in my back, one man said, “Yu tink mi neva si yu pan TV a diss di leada. Yu fi get gunshot inna yu marrow!”

Because I was scared and didn’t want to show it, I appealed to them by citing my support for them in 1996, 1997, and 2001. It was to no avail, and I was relieved as two heavily armed policemen walked over and said, “Come, Mr Wignall, this is getting out of hand.” The Denham Town Police Station became my sanctuary.

To the rabid, violent diehard, there is no grey area. The support must be 100 per cent, not 99 per cent.

The quarrelsome diehard

It is to our credit that the violent confrontations between PNP and JLP diehards have significantly subsided in the last two election cycles. With the growth of social media like Facebook, various diehard factions have formed groups with nice-sounding names like Speak your mind (JLP), Viewpoints (PNP) and others.

Most of these groupings are nothing more than psychological outlets for cussing the other side. Any appeal to reason is quickly lost on them and pretty soon anyone who dares to dissect a policy move or a political statement in a dispassionate manner must hurriedly vacate the group conversation. Faceless and without a live body, they hurl words and take us right back to the divisive days of the 1970s.

In a perverse way we can take some credit. The blogosphere in the US is just as bitter and filled with ignorance.

In support of the Logistics Hub

A technical education blitz must begin now if Jamaica is seriously considering making itself ready for the employment opportunities which must open up as the Logistics Hub rolls out fully in 2016.

In many conversations in many forums, the naysayers are many and with some justification. We have never been able to get anything right in this country that has the potential to radically alter our economic fortunes and directions.

One person said online, “When Digicel first came to Jamaica with this new-fangled idea of making Jamaica their telecommunications hub for the globe, using a cellphone, just a very small handful of persons in Jamaica took them seriously. The rest is history.

“There is a confluence of forces, some local but mostly global, that is demanding a major logistics node in the Americas and whose homework point them specifically to Jamaica.

“Most aptly, our Shakespearean immersion foretold that;

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

“In my travels regionally, Caribbean peoples everywhere marvel as to why Jamaicans are such a smart, innovative, assertive and conscious people yet…

“Come on guys, let’s get on with it.”

Another suggested that the big business class in Jamaica are not too interested as they will be finding themselves out of their league when the hub is rolled out. It appears to me that with the scarcity of professionals in technical areas in Jamaica we will be forced to draw on the skills of the diaspora. Some Jamaicans will return, not to romantically ‘give back’ as some fooled themselves in the early 1970s.

They will only return to high-paying jobs which require special skills.

In any event, this country needs to realign its teaching in math and the sciences. Frankly, I would love to see a shift from our brightest high school students studying law and medicine and moving to engineering subjects.

That, of course, would need either a weeding out of the poor math teachers that this country is saddled with, or a blitz in teaching these teachers how to unlearn the nonsense of rote teaching of math.

observemark@gmail.com