So the general election will be on Thursday, February 25, and nomination day will be this coming Tuesday, February 9. Both days are political anniversaries.

February 25 will be the 10th anniversary of the election of Portia Simpson Miller to the presidency of the People’s National Party (PNP). Michael Manley was elected president of the PNP on Sunday, February 9, 1969, and the PNP won the general election of February 9, 1989, before serving 18 years in office until 2007.

Of note, too, Michael Manley was sworn in for the third time as prime minister on Monday February 13, 1989, and held the office before and after Edward Seaga, who served from 1980 to 1989.

Anniversaries as general election dates in Jamaica are not new. In 1967 the re-election of the Jamaica Labour Party was touted as an anniversary present for Sir Alexander Bustamante who was stepping down from representational politics. The general election that year was February 21, and Bustamante said that his birthday was February 24. But, according to his cousin, National Hero Norman Washington Manley, there was no official record of Bustamante’s birth.

A day after the 1967 General Election, Donald Sangster was sworn in as Jamaica’s second prime minister in political independence. He died 48 days later and is still the shortest-serving prime minister in Jamaica. Andrew Holness was prime minister for 74 days, between October 23, 2011 and January 5, 2012, when Portia Simpson Miller was sworn in for the second time. Sangster died on April 11, 1967 and Hugh Lawson Shearer was sworn in a few hours later as prime minister.

In January 1972, then Senator Eric Bell, as a councillor in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (later minister of public utilities, minister of education and minister of finance), called on the prime minister to announce the general election for February 22. As any self- respecting prime minister would do when such a demand came from a member of the Opposition, Shearer used a different date. So, on Monday January 31, 1972, Shearer told a large Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) crowd at the Bustamante statue in downtown Kingston that the election would be leap year day: Tuesday, February 29 1972.

Within two days, Opposition Leader Michael Manley thanked Shearer for the election date and said it would be a birthday present for his mother, Edna Manley. While Edna Manley was actually born on March 1, 1900 (not February 29), it could have been called a birthday present nevertheless. In 1967 there were three days between the general election and Bustamante’s birthday, and yet the result was regarded as a birthday present for Bustamante.

Regarding Edna Manley’s birthday, the year 1900 was not a leap year, but no one rivalling the PNP came forward to question it. Normally, for a year to be a leap year it has to be divisible by four, but for the last year of a century to be a leap year it has to be divisible by 40. So whereas the year 2000 was a leap year, 1900 was not and 2100 will not be a leap year either. But there might have been some confusion about 1900 not being a leap year everywhere, including England, where Edna Swithenbank — who later married Norman Manley — was born.

Michael Manley stepped down as prime minister in 1992. P J Patterson was elected PNP president on March 28, 1992 and sworn in as Jamaica’s sixth prime minister on March 30, 1992. Patterson used the March 30 anniversary as the date of the general election in 1993, which saw the PNP getting the second of four straight terms in office. When Portia Simpson Miller was elected PNP president on February 25, 2006, P J Patterson remained prime minister until March 30, 2006 when Simpson Miller was sworn in as prime minister.

P J Patterson decided to carry Simpson Miller abroad to show her around the international financial institutions and trading partners before she assumed office. Also, in his final speech at Gordon House before resigning from Parliament, Patterson displayed a letter with signatures of the PNP members of parliament advising the then governor general that Portia Simpson Miller had the confidence of a majority of MPs. Perhaps it took a month to get that together following the PNP presidential race with four contenders.

In terms of using anniversary dates, however, they do not always bring good luck. The JLP won power on April 10, 1962 on the 27th birthday of P J Patterson, who had taken a year off from law studies in England to campaign for the PNP. Although the longest-serving prime minister so far, Patterson had his personal setbacks. He lost his first bid to be a vice-president of the PNP in 1967.

Patterson was twice passed over in candidate selections to represent the PNP in two by-elections. One was in 1967 in St Elizabeth South Eastern to fill the vacancy created by the death of Burnett Birthright Coke when Vivian Blake won for the PNP. The other was in 1969 in St Andrew East Central to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Norman Washington Manley when Dr Kenneth McNeill won for the PNP. And Patterson lost his Westmoreland South Eastern seat to the JLP’s Euphemia Williams in 1980.

Despite his unlucky birthday in 1962, and his other defeats and setbacks, P J Patterson was otherwise politically fortunate. At 23 years old, he was called upon to take charge of the PNP organisation in Western Jamaica, which ensured the re-election of the PNP led by Norman Washington Manley in 1959. And, most notably, it is since the time of P J Pattersonthat general election victories have been more about political organisation than the issues.

True, it was Norman Washington Manley who told the PNP to “organise and organise and organise”, but that did not come into full fruition until Patterson became president of the PNP. Bruce Golding became prime minister in 2007 when the JLP barely won, despite a national desire for change after 18 years of the PNP in power. This is when I became convinced that elections are really won on election day.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com