IT’S safe to say that the political silly season is upon us, like it or not.

An unmistakeable feature of this silly season is that promises come thick and fast, many of which will not materialise after the election is over. It’s something that afflicts both of the major political parties and we are not likely to see the end of the practice any time soon.

The latest manifestation of the silly season is this week’s announcement of a $50-million sustainable development plan for poverty-stricken St Thomas and the immediate reaction of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) youth arm, Generation 2000 (G2K).

St Thomas is widely perceived to be the poorest of Jamaica’s 14 parishes. One could be forgiven for thinking that the 1865 march and sacrifices of Deacon Paul Bogle and his followers from Stony Gut to colonial Spanish Town was all in vain.

Although bordering the Corporate Area on the east, the parish has not seen anything near the phenomenal development that St Catherine on the west has attained, beginning with housing.

Very superficially, St Thomas has frequently been written off by unthinking people who only associate the parish with its former reputation as a place where necromancy, better known as obeah, was widely practised.

To his credit, the JLP’s energetic Delano Seiveright has been keeping St Thomas in the spotlight as he vies with Dr Fenton Ferguson, the health minister, for the East St Thomas seat in the coming general election. It should be no less.

But here we must draw the line.

Mr Seiveright and his Western St Thomas colleague, Mr James Robertson, have been making the case that St Thomas is overlooked and woefully short of opportunities for development.

Forget that for many years St Thomas has been regarded as JLP country. What messrs Seiveright and Robertson have been championing is what one would expect effective representatives of the people to do, and we commend them.

In that respect, however, we would want to believe that the announcement of the sustainable development plan by the committee planning the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Morant Bay uprising would represent a victory of sorts for the duo.

Yet, speaking through G2K, the JLP has already written off the plan, the very thing they have been strenuously advocating for, as a vote-catching election ploy. They have also frowned on the proposed use of National Housing Trust (NHT) funds to help finance the project.

The JLP cannot have it both ways. What they should do is to start immediately to mobilise and organise to pressure the Government into getting the project done. They might also wish to point the Government to alternative sources the funds being provided by the NHT.

Otherwise, it would appear that what they are really interested in is winning the election and any development plan under this administration is an inconvenience to that goal, no matter how needed it is by the people of St Thomas.

We have said in this space before that the JLP needs a new template for how it conducts the business of opposition. This is another clear example of why.