THE Jamaica Labour Party can learn to formulate and execute on the four “Ps” of political stratagem and strategy and the People’s National Party would be its best tutor. Implementing the 4Ps (process, people, place, and purpose) could be beneficial to the JLP, but it would require the party to accept the inadequacies of its organisational shrewdness, and for its supporters to be less trenchant and more willing to apply dispassionate analysis to the party’s weaknesses. There is an institutionalised perception that the JLP is organisationally dysfunctional and even moreso in the absence of a clearly defined ideological framework that would serve to undergird its mission and focus.

Some political historians have theorised that the dysfunction remains because the JLP is leader-centric and fails to recognise how much it keeps changing its process to suit the personalities of its leaders even as it remains steadfast to “Remember Bustamante, he served you well”. For context, Bustamante stood side by side with Norman Manley, but left the PNP to form the JLP in 1943. Although many stories abound about Bustamante’s sudden departure from the PNP, the explanation that features most is that the “PNP was too radical”. Well, PNP’s radicalism helped Jamaica achieve universal adult suffrage, self-government and political independence. In fact, when universal adult suffrage was implemented in the general election of 1944, which the JLP won, Jamaica became the third state in the British Empire to conduct elections on this basis.

It would not be politically fallacious for the JLP to live vicariously through the PNP, if only to study the PNP’s commitment to its mission. The experience may convince the JLP to discontinue its blind embrace of its leader’s personality as a political strategy. Bustamante’s charisma was largely responsible for the JLP’s early electoral successes. However, for the JLP to have remained wedded to Busta’s magnetism, even posthumously, and as a long-term strategy, is tantamount to political short-sightedness. There is nothing logical about vowing to “Follow Bustamante till we die”. If Bustamante was so instrumental in shaping Jamaica’s development, why is it that the JLP is not propagating his story the way the PNP does of NW Manley?

There are glaring organisational differences between the both parties. While the PNP is maturely progressive, the JLP is maturely insular. Besides these noticeable differences, however, there are no longer any compelling or overarching ideological differences between them as once obtained. The cold war that incited bitter ideological fights has long gone. The zeitgeist is no longer influenced by violent ideological battles between east and west or between capitalists and communists; the spirit of the time is largely about the rise of developing Asia and the new economic order, sectarian violence, and religious-incited terrorism due to intolerance, particularly emanating from the Middle East.

Domestic political success belongs to the political party that can best connect with the people to deliver hope and opportunity, especially to millennials who are desperately in need of a game-changer. Indubitably, the economic realities of the mid-1980s to present have narrowed the macroeconomic options available thus pulling both parties closer.

It is a widely held view among many that JLP is better than the PNP at managing the economy. Many have cited the 1960s and the 1980s as years of economic growth. Yet, hardly any of the references to those periods of economic growth speak to the terrible social conditions that existed, mostly during the early to mid-1960s.

A recent opinion piece in this newspaper mentioned the existence of rundown hospitals and substandard medical care within the context of an incompetent PNP Government, which is par for the course. Interestingly, the author omitted the prevalence of yaws, chiggers, high infant mortality rate, illiteracy, low lifeexpectancy, lack of electricity, telephones and the prevalence of pit latrines that, up to this day, continue to contaminate our aquifers, in his magnum opus on the good old days of the 1960s and mid-1980s. These gaps in any account of our history could fill the Mona Reservoir.

The writer did not refer either to the “rationalisation of health care”, reintroduction of hospital fees or to the conversion of rural hospitals into health centres during the 1980s. Yet, these maladies were happening during periods of economic growth. The article mentioned nothing about the automatic disqualification of dark-skinned Jamaicans from front-office jobs in certain banks and hotels, however brilliant many of whom had to settle for jobs as maids in housekeeping. We must never overlook the social reengineering of the 1970s; neither must we cast our social advancement in the backwaters just to suit our narrow-minded political orientation. Jamaica is a forerunner in many ways, our maternity leave act makes the US appear backward — the US has none. We have come a long way.

Say what you may about the PNP’s incompetence in government, the one thing that is solidly true of the PNP is that the leadership has always understood the socio-cultural dynamics of the Jamaican electorate to such an extent that the party will remain active, though less attractive, in the political consciousness of the majority. It is to the PNP’s credit that it has managed to convert political consciousness into profitable political outcome, by getting the people to act in ways mostly favorable to the party’s interest. The JLP can learn from the PNP how to do this with expert seamlessness. Therefore, those who take the slogan “Jamaica is PNP country” lightly may be doing so at their own peril.

Nevertheless, Jamaica does not belong to any one political party and there are inherent dangers for any political party to embrace such acclaim. The PNP knows how to “count”; and its ability to canvass and convert is a consolidation of its organisational focus, methods and purpose. Constructed around NW Manley’s exhortation to the party to “organise, organise, organise”, the PNP has managed to achieve many electoral successes by investing strategically in process, people, purpose and place; these are the vital 4Ps of political organisation and success.

For, unlike the JLP, which seems forever focused on process, rather than on purpose, people and place, the PNP has managed to keep its achievements front and centre in the minds of the voter sufficient for them to feel an obligation to vote for the party. It is not coincidental, therefore, that the PNP continues to recite the achievements of NW Manley, Michael Manley and P J Patterson with such frequency, reverence, and duty. “My leader born yah…juck dem wid land lease; equal pay for women and no bastard nuh deh again…” are amplified at almost every PNP event for a reason. The PNP is very adept at telling its story. For the PNP, repetition is more than the best form of pedagogy; but it is also central to the party’s focus on political education.

Burnscg@aol.com