Subsequent to a general election, there are a series of ritualistic events the Jamaican people should expect to follow; a series of events inculcated into a broken country by a forlorn political system.

Now at an age to fully garner the precepts of cognitive reasoning, impartial to bias or prejudicial inference, my statement is not only justified by documented actions of the People’s National Party, nor through the specter of anger and disappointment that lingers with the nation’s people, but through the greatest teacher: experience.

I was 16 years of age when the People’s National Party won the 2011 General Election; hence, old enough to recognise that my country was in a state of adversity and needed to be resuscitated. The dollar needed to be stabilised, the cry of the youth was deafening and needed to be silenced, and the mark of poverty needed to be lifted from the nation. All of this could never be achieved in one term without some divine intervention, but all the country needed was a start.

The plans presented by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller in her campaign resembled the start I envisioned for my nation and I was excited. I was ready to play my part as a citizen to make Simpson Miller’s goal, my goal, and the people’s goal for the country a reality. But to the tiresome and overused political cycle I was naïve.

The list of methodical approaches and plans to alleviate the country from its state of brokenness was dished out; the new prime minister sworn into office; and little did I know the cycle had commenced. Following suit was a delay in action to execute or even create a platform to execute the plans held on to prayerfully by citizens. From my understanding, these ‘proposals’ were only used by the party to bribe the nation into administering them into the hands of power; and we the people dare not try and remind them of it, or, be drowned into the sea of excuses. Proximate, new expenses arose, landing the country even further into economic quagmire, and the cries of the citizens were nowhere near beseeching enough for the Government to perish the thought of the reiterated macabre solution of raising taxes. Instead, the cost of living went up, while wages were frozen — at least the wages of those who were already falling the below the belt were frozen; as the prime minister had another vision for her salary. Such is the road of the ritualistic events the Jamaican people should expect to follow after an election.

While we are still in the stage of overbearing taxes, the Government is preparing to commence the next step of this dire cycle: the stage of firing stillborn promises into the eardrums of poverty’s handmaids. New ‘renovation plans’ for the country are being issued and the ‘bribery’ has begun. However, to this I say no more. These events have become synchronized within the lives of the nation’s citizens for too long and it is time for a change. We cry for power after the Government incapacitates or rights, our voice, and our cries. Well, power will soon again be in our hands, and the question is, what do we do with such power? Where does the precepts of our voting originate? Does it originate from the devotion to a perfidious party or from the devotion to the well-being of us as citizens, which will, incontrovertibly, enhance the well-being of our country?

tashani95@live.com