Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. — George Orwell

CONTROL of people’s cognitive map is a time-honoured strategy for winning local and national elections worldwide. Mind management is almost a ‘science’. With respect to representational politics, it is well-known that how people think, what they think about, and how often they think it is directly related to how they vote, why, and who they vote for.

A concentrated attempt at synchronising political propaganda is one of the surest signs that an election is imminent. I have pointed out in recent articles that my sources — those reliable John Chewits, Banana Quits and Black-Bellied Plovers — have said a general election will be held before the next national budget is read. January is said to be a “bruk-pocket” month in Jamaica. My sources say the People’s National Party (PNP) will generously piggyback on the merriment at Christmas and its attendant suspension of reality. January 2016, the birds tweet, will not be a tamarind month, especially for those already “genetically connected”. Slinger Francisco, known worldwide as the ‘Mighty Sparrow’, undisputed King of Calypso, sang, “You can’t love without money. You can’t make love pon hungry belly.” Cupid’s arrows will fly, the birds say, and before Valentine’s Day.

I will give more from those birds soon.

Have you noticed that all announcements by the Government in recent weeks are packaged as game-changers by political lieutenants, surrogates, and some in the media? It is not sheer co-incidence.

The first known use of ‘game-changer’ was in 1993, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Some credible sports references maintain, however, that game-changer has been in use since the 1950s. Notwithstanding the doubts about the origin of the term, it is accepted that game-changer was made popular in the title of the book: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. In simple terms, a game-changer is a person or thing that dramatically or foundationally changes the course, strategy, character, etc, of something.

Events that alter the course of history and weave themselves into the fabric of our consciousness are game-changers. These often result in seismic shifts, whether good or bad. For example: The Haitian Revolution was the first and only successful slave revolution. It was led by Touissant L’Overture. The American Marshall Plan enacted post-WWII saved Europe from financial ruin. The election of America’s first president of African descent is universally accepted as a watershed moment. The Berlin Conference of 1885 saw Africa divided up among European countries for the purpose of territorial and natural resource control. The WWII Pearl Harbour attack by Japan on US Naval Forces led to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the most costly war in recorded history. Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon, and I could go on and on.

Sealing a deal that, according to the Ministry of Finance, will save the country US$250 million, when Jamaica is the world’s third-most-indebted economy, is no game-changer.

I noticed that Therese Turner-Jones, country representative of the Inter-American Development Bank, one our creditors, and some Wall Street investment bankers have termed the US$2 billion Eurobond transaction as a game-changer. Creditors are concerned only that Jamaica remains healthy enough to borrow and repay debt. Consistent indebtedness means control. The overburdened taxpayers are the ones who will be left holding the bag.

Surrogates of the Government have also massively increased their efforts to mind-manage.

Let me give some examples. Ralston Hyman — a business reporter who works with POWER 106FM — according to last Sunday’s Gleaner, says the most recent Eurobond deal is a game-changer. No surprise there! No surprise too that Hyman and Phillip Paulwell — maybe the most costly minister of government since Independence — are being rewarded with the Order of Distinction. Hyman is being recognised for his work in journalism, and Paulwell for 20 years of service to politics. This is a devaluation of a national award.

Hyman’s views seem to shift in tandem with his political masters. “Financial analyst Ralston Hyman has described the proposal of a set of university lecturers for the Government to renegotiate the primary surplus target under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal from 7.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent as foolish.”

His views on the lowering of the primary surplus, as reported in The Gleaner of July 10, 2015, and his about-turn so soon as Dr Peter Phillips admitted that the Government gave its blessings to a letter by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who petitioned Obama for a relaxation of Jamaica’s IMF conditions is public record are still fresh.

Lambert Brown of NHT/Outameni fame, and a veritable yes-man of the PNP, says the deal is a game-changer. So too Reverend Garnet Roper, chairman of one of the biggest political ‘feeding trees’ in Jamaica — the Jamaica Urban Transit Company. Some in media, who clearly have not checked the meaning of the term, have carelessly parroted these propagandists.

In the next couple of weeks, the PNP will flood the media with propaganda about how well the economy is doing and I expect to see even more generous use of the term game-changer. Game-changers are happening while there is one fire unit in the parish of St Mary; chronic shortage of police and emergency vehicles; billions are owed to hundreds of contractors by Government; thousands are suffering because of a preventable water crisis; garbage is not being collected on a timely basis, especially in socially disadvantaged communities; and 683 Jamaicans have been slaughtered in fewer than eight months.

On Wednesday of last week, I heard Phillip Paulwell on radio saying he would be signing a deal soon that will be a “game-changer”. I wonder if it will be as game-changing as NetServ, which cost taxpayers $200 million and no benefits; or the failed 381-megawatt energy project that embarrassed the country and damaged Jamaica’s reputation globally.

Some in the private sector have caught the game-changer bug. Last week I saw where Jamaica Public Service (JPS) signed a liquefied natural gas agreement with a US firm. This is how Kelly Tomblin, CEO for JPS, described the dealL: “JPS is honoured to be leading this game-changer for the energy sector,” she said, adding that the “introduction of gas will support the national goals of energy security, sustainability, and affordability”. (Jamaica Observer, August 9, 2015)

Leaders in the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, like Dennis Chung, who is also head of the National Solid Waste Management Authority board, and understandably Richard Byles, head of Economic Programme Oversight Committee, now generously label government programmes as game-changing. What are being called game-changers locally, however, are things that are happening in emerging and developed economies all over the world almost daily. They are seen as de rigueur to human development. Is it that our standards are so low that we latch on to any and everything that seems beneficial and call it game-changing? And, incidentally, game-changing is not about making announcements; it refers to things that actually happen.

Let me suggest something here: A real game-changer has been implemented in the last decade. Under huge pressure from local and international human rights groups, plus foreign governments, the Bruce Golding Administration was forced to set up the Independent Commission of Investigations in 2010. This was done to halt the slaughter of citizens by agents of the State, namely members of the Jamaican Constabulary Force (JCF).

For years some members of the JCF were seemingly addicted to killing, especially socially dispossessed Jamaicans, with impunity. I could cite several studies, Amnesty International reports and cases from local courts, but space does not permit.

The figures of Table 1 and Table 2 speak for themselves.

Jamaica is known globally as the fifth most murderous country worldwide. Additionally, police fatal shootings are among the highest in the world. Why is INDECOM a game-changer? INDECOM has woven itself into the fabric of our consciousness and halted a deadly course of human slaughter in the country.

See Table 3. Again the figures speak volumes.

For the first time in 30 years, after seven months in a year, less than 100 citizens have been fatally shot by the police. Plus there is a new consciousness among ordinary citizens that there is a credible body that protects their human rights. The fact that the police do not believe their rights are also protected by INDECOM is a coincidence of propaganda by politicians who want to curry favour with the police and a ‘religious’ commitment to a culture of extrajudicial killing.

Those like Damion Crawford who wrote a fatuous commentary in The Gleaner last Sunday, in which he blasted INDECOM, are mere poppyshow anachronistic figures. I will not waste time rehashing from his tirade, since the imbecility of it has been accepted almost nationally.

Taking about poppyshow, given some of the revelations last week, I wonder if we should not remember the period as National Poppyshow Week. First there was the idiotic challenge to Andrew Holness’s leadership of the JLP. This is a classic case of Kamikaze Politics. How could anyone with a modicum of sense stage a takeover when Holness is the most popular political leader in the country — according to the most recent Don Anderson Polls — and a general election in the offing? Those involved must have watched the Death Wish series too late at night.

Then there was Dr Dayton Campbell’s brouhaha. Campbell, a physician by training and soon- to-be lawyer, tore into his party colleague. His attack on former Miss World Lisa Hanna, now minister of youth and culture, seems in sync with rumblings I have been hearing about in the PNP.

There is a faction, the birds tell me, that is hell-bent that no former JLP ‘supporter’ can lead the PNP when Portia decides to step down. Hanna, I am told, has ambitions to lead at the highest level. Some weeks ago, Dr Phillips put the Comrades in the ‘stand behind your blocks’ mode to stop the bloodletting from the several leadership challenges to, especially, first- and second-time MPs. Obviously Phillips’ directives at York Town have not quieted a nasty underbelly. JLP backsliders should know that PNP ‘ginnigogs’ do not trust turncoats beyond a certain point. They believe political ‘parakeets’ must never fly too far above their nests.

Two very ambitious and former ‘Bustamante-ites’ got a good taste of what some socialists term the ‘hidden curriculum’ last week. The PNP all but slammed the membership door in Joan Gordon-Webley’s face last week. The Observer had a banner headline last Sunday ‘Gordon-Webley is out’. Correction; she was never in.

Ian Hayles, the assistant to life chairman of the PNP and Water and Climate Change Minister Robert Pickersgill — the man who told us that “We believe it is best for the PNP to form the Government, therefore, anything that will lead us or causes us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country” — was handed a public reprimand last week by part-time Minister of Agriculture Derrick Kellier. Country folks would put it this way: “Don’t ‘lass you pass.” A very uncomplimentary letter written by the youngest daughter of D K Duncan stopped within a hair’s breadth of calling Hayles a ‘frighten-Friday’ upstart ‘hurry come-up’ and traitor.

What is happening in the PNP is simple. Rustic folks might put it this way. There is more “water than flour”. The “scarce benefits” tree is drying up fast. In this context, those who consider themselves ‘authentic socialists’ want the choicest cuts of meats that are left. I believe we will hear, if not see, more of these kinds of revelations soon. There is a view that the PNP are a special bunch that is held together by an ideological adhesive. That was true in the 1970s.

There is another strong group, I am told, who maintain that no one, even with suspected pink antecedents, will lead Norman and Michael Manley’s party. Watch that one!

Maybe the biggest poppyshow of the week was the National Water Commission (NWC) press conference. A seemingly smiling acting president of the NWC, Mark Barnett, told thousands of us in Kingston and St Andrew that we would get water every third day, not every other day. Well, Mr Barnett, to begin with, we have never been getting water every other day since restrictions were announced earlier in the year. Noticeably absent from the press conference was Robert Pickersgill — the responsible minister. Maybe he was doing the rain dance. I hope he would do us a favour and dance all the way out of the ministry. The money being used to pay Pickersgill’s salary is a colossal waste of limited resources.

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

— Og Mandino

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.