Clearly, the JLP did the math
IT was quite difficult to figure out that the 17th general election in February 2016 was going to be Jamaica’s most exciting and would produce the closest result in the country’s 71 years of electoral contests since adult suffrage.
And while so many people were confident of a People’s National Party (PNP) victory and even another PNP landslide, a few of us were quietly cautioning that it was going to be very close, although inwardly, ‘close’ would have been relative to perhaps a four or a five-seat margin either way.
The Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP’s) surge early on election night gave the impression that it was going to be a ‘built by labour’ landslide, but as the counting wore on, the PNP, bolstered by the steady haul of their 24 safe seats (including their six garrisons to the JLP’s three) and success in seven of the 23 marginal seats, eventually closed the gap. However, the PNP was left knocking on the door some time after the JLP crossed the victory line with their 21 incumbents intact and 11 former seats briefly leased to the PNP in 2011.
On the preliminary count, the JLP had celebrated with only a lead of three seats (33-30) and by a mere 4,594 votes (0.5 per cent). But, so what? Bruce Golding had attained a similar victory by only four seats (32-28) and 5,163 votes (0.6 per cent) in 2007, and Sir Alexander Bustamante did not even have the majority of votes when he consolidated power by just three seats in 1949.
It became even more interesting when the final result whittled the score down to JLP 32, PNP 31 following Dr Winston Green’s retention of his seat, and even after the other nail-biting recounts, the score remained decisive as if it was so ordained by fate to establish this new era of a genuine razor-thin margin.
Like an episode from the Twilight Zone, this election result has taken Jamaica where she has never gone before – to the brink of the closest outcome possible, where the situation now dictates performance, punctuality, co-operation and a unity of purpose, because there is “no margin for error”.
This generation of younger Jamaicans who have only heard of the ‘two-term syndrome’ which dominated our politics for the first 45 years after 1944, are now empowered with the challenge to lower the adversity of voter apathy, having witnessed the reality of two one-term governments within a single decade.
In an article published in the Sunday Observer on March 22, 2015 commenting on JLP candidates, constituencies and political manoeuvres, I wrote: “If the JLP can hold on to their 21 seats and then take those 11 marginal seats, well…do the math.” Nothing could have been more prophetic. After some initial fooling around, the party clearly did the math, applied the correct approach to their organisation and pulled off an incredible victory.
Simply put, the December 2011 general election had established a total of 23 marginal seats, of which 16 were won by the PNP and seven won by the JLP. Of the remaining 40 seats regarded as either safe or strong seats for either party, the PNP held 26 to the JLP’s 14. Ironically, neither party lost any of their safe seats, but the result of the election was determined by the JLP’s conquest of 11 of the PNP’s marginal seats which added to the retention of all of their seven marginals and all of their 14 safe seats.
Luckily for the PNP, the swing to the JLP was only about a modest six per cent which was not enough to move any of the safe seats, but the election presented a good example of how a small national swing can influence the destiny of marginal seats and, by extension, the result of a general election.
Essentially, only the PNP’s Dr Green (with a 1.9 per cent margin), Peter Bunting (with 2.5 per cent), Dr Fenton Ferguson (3.0 per cent), Dr Dayton Campbell (5.1 per cent) and Richard Azan (5.7 per cent) were able to escape the JLP dragnet.
Consequently, it was not so much that the PNP had lost by one seat, but moreso the humiliation of losing 11 seats to the JLP after only one term. That was never remotely on the cards for the PNP, especially since Jamaica is supposed to be ‘PNP country’. It is that kind of arrogance that caught up with the PNP, and has left so many Comrades in utter shock and dismay, as hardly anyone in the party seemed to have conditioned their mind to the possibility of what transpired. But how did it all come to this?
As the party reputed to be the most resilient with greater base support and well noted for their organisation, the election was always one for the PNP to lose, and they did a remarkable job in doing just that. Resilience and other virtues went through the window and all kinds of foolishness started to encompass the once proud party originally conceptualised by OT Fairclough.
By the middle of last year when the entire episode of constituency challenges and counter-challenges erupted, the writing was clearly on the wall. Those alone were direct signs that all was not well, that the party lacked effective leadership, direction, and vision, as they droned along on auto-pilot and gave the impression that everyone was doing their own thing.
In tandem with all of that came the latest litany of scandals – ChikV, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s prison gift, dead babies scandal, bad gas scandal, and the ZikV outbreak which all took a toll on the Administration. These were later followed during the heat of the election campaign with the backlash from their attack on Andrew Holness’s house, the superior impact of the JLP’s Election Manifesto and the Ten-Point Plan with the attractive $1.5 million income tax break to which there was a tumultuous resonance from workers everywhere.
To make matters worse, the party’s ill-advised boycott of the leadership debates (to shield Portia Simpson Miller, despite denials) became the ultimate turn-off for PNP voters, for new and young voters and for the undecided who then decided to vote JLP.
In all my years of following Jamaican politics (going all the way back to primary school), I had never seen the PNP in such disarray. From Portia’s putrid leadership, to Dr Peter Phillips’ frustrations, Phillip Paulwell’s prosaic pronouncements, Paul Burke’s usual penchant for preposterous rubbish such as who is “under pressure” and who’s “pinned down,” the dimmed glow of star-boys KD Knight and PJ Patterson, the party resorting to a public meeting at a bastion like Harbour View (really?), and showing off far superior funding with an oversaturation of the same old uninspiring ads, when those of us who have had more than a passing acquaintance with the advertising business know that oversaturated advertising is as bad as none at all.
Too many things were happening to the PNP all at once and they actually became an administration that needed to be put out of their misery.
However, although the JLP and their leadership had problems of their own, in the wake of the second failed caucus (of elected members) to register a vote of no-confidence against Andrew Holness’s leadership on August 11, 2015, it apparently became a wake-up call for both leader and party, as elements, personalities, campaign and everything started to jell as a united force.
Soon, the JLP started benefiting from the unusual series of PNP blunders and bad publicity, while Andrew Holness’s political stocks and stature were rising faster than a Usain Bolt 100-metre dash. Holness virtually metamorphosed from internal unpopularity to a truly mature and dynamic party leader who really started to look, sound and campaign like an effective leader, forging unity of all groups in the party, spreading welcome mats for the former prodigals, addressing crucial issues and speaking directly to the swarm of undecided voters and those who had given nourishment to the apathy that has plagued the system for over two decades.
The JLP’s excellent utilisation of social media actually transformed Bobby Pickersgill’s ‘articulate minority’ into quite a majority, and with limited funds, the party targeted specific groups, specific public meeting venues, and less but far more effective TV and radio advertising.
When the JLP announced the candidacy of Juliet Holness in St Andrew East-Rural it virtually knocked the wind out of the PNP (and stunned a few Labourites too), as singularly it became a massive game-changer that was flawless. Instead of defending their International Monetary Fund passes and other perceived gains, Dr Phillips and his campaign team spent too much time futilely attacking Holness’s house, the JLP’s Ten-Point Plan, and gave too much focus to seats held by Holness, Audley Shaw, Ruddy Spencer, James Robertson and Ed Bartlett, when anyone with the slightest knowledge of those seats knew they would never be lost in a national swing to the JLP.
Coming to terms with that reality was perhaps one of the greatest problems facing the PNP and which also generated much public scepticism towards the polls which were highlighting PNP leads and downplaying the JLP impetus and momentum. My final projection was a 35-28 JLP win, with wrong selections only in St Thomas Eastern, St Mary South-Eastern, St Catherine East Central, St Ann North Western, and Trelawny Northern.
Apart from the fact that the JLP grabbed 61 per cent of the PNP’s marginal seats to secure victory, the election tended to produce a result which, in many ways, symbolised the virtues of equality and balance as a challenge to the future behaviour of the two major parties. For instance, it was the fourth general election held in the month of February and both parties now share two victories each in February – the JLP in 1967 and 2016, and the PNP in 1972 and 1989.
All of the four two-seat parishes (St Thomas, Portland, Trelawny, and Hanover) returned to their popular status of each being shared by both parties. And the poll dominance in all 14 parishes was also shared equally between both parties, with each polling most votes in seven parishes – the JLP in St Catherine, Clarendon, St Elizabeth, St James, Trelawny, St Mary and Kingston; and the PNP in St Andrew, Westmoreland, Manchester, Hanover, St Ann, Portland and St Thomas.
However, in terms of seats won, the JLP failed to control an entire parish, but they dominated the Corporate Area with eight of the 15 seats, St Catherine with six of 11, St James with four of five and St Elizabeth with three of the four seats. This time, the PNP was dominant only in Westmoreland with a 100 per cent seat tally, with the usual three to one sweep of seats in Manchester and two of the three seats in St Mary.
Out of a registered electorate of 1,824,412, only 882,489 bothered to vote, a record in quantity, but only a national voter turnout of 48.4 per cent, the lowest ever in a general election since adult suffrage, and falling well short of the 53.2 per cent turnout in 2011. Despite the growing apathy and lowering trend of voter turnout, there was some optimism this time for a higher turnout based on the intensity of the 2016 election campaign, which became perhaps the first since 1944 to be determined largely on issues and won by the Opposition, thus becoming so much more a shocker with 52 per cent of the voters evading the polls.
Indeed, when one pollster predicted a 58 per cent turnout, my dream of seeing a million voters coming out to vote for the first time was severely shattered with the reality of the final result. Ironically, the low voter turnout affected the incumbent PNP much more than the JLP, as most PNP candidates polled less than previously, while JLP polls mostly exceeded their numbers in 2011.
Except for Julian Robinson (St Andrew South Eastern), Dr Ferguson (St Thomas Eastern) and Dr Lynvale Bloomfield (Portland Eastern), all of the other 28 PNP winners (including Mrs Simpson Miller) had a reduction in the majority of votes.
In this election, which saw only 6,179 more voters participating than in 2011, the JLP polled 437,178 votes (49.5 per cent) or only 24 per cent of the total electorate, while the PNP polled 433,629 (49.1 per cent) which amounted to 23.8 per cent of the total electorate. A total of 25 Independents and third party candidates polled a mere 1,807 votes (0.2 per cent).
The JLP’s poll increased by 31,258 (7.7 per cent) and the PNP’s poll decreased by 30,435 (6.6 per cent), but while there was a slight surge in the Independent vote, all of the third parties continue to decline in spite of their extensive soliciting of attention and recognition in the media. What this election has shown, perhaps even more succinctly than the others, is that Jamaica’s deeply entrenched two-party system is alive and well, and it matters very little whether there is a large or small voter turnout.
My view is that the deadlock both major parties have on the electorate would most likely be broken quicker by a true Independent than someone from a third party. This is a position that is borne out by the actual history of both entities, as Independents have shown in earlier years that they can win seats, while third parties have only demonstrated how many deposits they can afford to lose.
Maybe we need another Harold Allan, another ‘Slave-Boy’ Evans or another Rose Leon – someone with a national image, political courage, commitment, credibility and financial stability and unlike most of the current bunch who brought back memories of the Stan Grant-type.
Although it was the constituencies of St Catherine South-Western (with 20,439) and St Mary Western (20,075) which polled the most votes, those with the highest voter turnout continued to be St Elizabeth South Eastern (61.7 per cent), St Elizabeth South-Western (61.0 per cent) and Portland Western (60.5 per cent).
These were followed by St Mary South Eastern (60.0 per cent), Clarendon Northern (59.1 per cent), Clarendon North Western (58.8 per cent), Trelawny Southern (58.3 per cent), Manchester North Eastern (58.1 per cent) and 17 other seats with over 50 per cent.
The lowest voter turnout occurred mostly in the die-hard areas, led by Westmoreland Western (35.9 per cent), East Kingston & Port Royal (38.7), Clarendon Central (38.8), Westmoreland Eastern (38.9), St James North Western (39.7), St Andrew East Central (39.8), and 26 others which fell below the national turnout. The constituencies of St Andrew South Western, St Andrew Southern, and Kingston Western had the remarkable voter turnout of 47.4, 47.9 and 50.7 per cent, respectively, and were like light years away from their gross over-voting of yesteryear.
At a time when Jamaica’s electoral system has been so modernised and voters have been so educated to the process, it is rather difficult to accept a total of 9,875 ballots (1.1 per cent) that have been rejected for whatever reasons. It is the highest figure in 23 years, and prior to 1993, the last time over 9,000 ballots were rejected was way back in 1955. Since then, rejected ballots (in general elections) have been averaging about 5,400 per election, so what has contributed to this big hike in rejects in an election that was so relatively peaceful and uneventful, and did they have any influence on the final outcome of any seat?
Five of the six persons who polled over 10,000 votes were JLP candidates, headed by Robert Montague (11,710) and Everald Warmington (11,370), followed by Shahine Robinson (10,821), Floyd Green (10,152) and Juliet Holness (10,101). The lone PNP candidate was Mrs Simpson Miller with 10,792, but she continued to rake in the highest victory margin of 10,090 (since only 702 JLP supporters can be found in that constituency!), with second place going to Dr Omar Davies on 8,211, third to Desmond McKenzie with 7,729 and fourth to Babsy Grange with 7,117. Rounding out the top 10 largest margins were Phillip Paulwell (6,247), Dr Andrew Wheatley (5,354), Mike Henry (4,494), Chris Tufton (3,712), Anthony Hylton (3,610) and Robert Montague (3,476).
The 10 lowest margins were attained by Dr Winston Green (PNP) 5, Derrick Kellier (PNP) 62, Leslie Campbell (JLP) 122, Fayval Williams (JLP) 161, Franklyn Witter (JLP) 305, Zavia Mayne (JLP) 337, Dave Brown (JLP) 340, Dr. Dayton Campbell (PNP) 410, James Robertson (JLP) 414, and Victor Wright (PNP) 449. Overall, only 13 candidates won by over 3,000 votes (as against 16 in 2011), 15 won by over 2,000, another 15 by over 1,000 and 18 by less than 1,000, of which 11 were fewer than 500 and two by fewer than 100 votes.
Interestingly, none of the former PNP Cabinet ministers lost their seats, and of the junior ministers, only Sharon Ffolkes-Abrahams (St James West Central) and Arnaldo Brown (St Catherine East Central) bit the dust, and only Julian Robinson, and Drs Ferguson and Bloomfield showed signs of improvement. Consequently, most of the best performers were to be found in the JLP camp, such as Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who doubled his margin; Warmington, who tripled his; as well as others like Shaw, Tufton, Chang, Smith, Bartlett, Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, Floyd Green, Spencer, Juliet Holness, and Montague who recorded the highest ever margin of victory in the St Mary Western seat.
My sincere apologies to the JLP’s Frank Witter and Alando Terrelonge for daring to publicly express strong doubts about their chances in their St Elizabeth and St. Catherine seats, both of whom proved me wrong and established their own records. With a second term in St. Elizabeth South Eastern, Witter has now gone where no other former JLP MP (for the seat) has gone before, outperforming the likes of BB Coke, Sir Donald Sangster, Cecil July and Jeremy Palmer.
As only the second JLP MP to conquer a Portmore seat in over 35 years, Terrelonge’s triumph in St Catherine East Central has exposed the PNP’s Achilles heel on their long stranglehold of the Sunshine City and sets up an interesting scenario for the next election, especially now that Colin Fagan’s neighbouring St Catherine South Eastern seat has once more been relegated to a marginal seat of just 3.5 per cent.
The election has introduced us to 13 new members of parliament (10 for the JLP and three for the PNP), the lowest number since 10 in 1962 and 11 in 1955, and well below the average of approximately 20 per election in 54 years since Independence. This is hardly good news for those who were expecting a heavy influx of new and younger members, and instead, the election result was mostly dominated by older winners.
Among the 13 are the JLP’s ‘Fantastic Four’ ladies – Marlene Malahoo-Forte, Fayval Williams, and the two Juliets – who equalled a PNP record set in 1997 when new members Jennifer Edwards, Sharon Hay-Webster, Alethia Barker and Doreen Chen were elected in St Catherine and Trelawny.
The overall performance of women in this election was quite an improvement over the 2011 election, with 11 (44.0 per cent) of the 25 ladies in the contest being victorious, compared to eight (12.7 per cent) of 22 in 2011. This time, it was the JLP women, numbering seven (63.6 per cent) of their 11 candidates, who made it, while only four (and all incumbents) of the PNP’s 12 were winners. So the present 63-member Lower House now consists of 11 women (17.5 per cent), but with total women elected now moving to only 39 (10.4 per cent) of the 376 individuals elected since 1944, female representation continues to be very disappointing.
Some notable losers included Imani Duncan Price, whose failure as a ‘formidable candidate’ might now relegate her to her pet quest for more women via the quota system; Jolyan Silvera, who felt no joy in being literally crushed by Montague; Phyllis Mitchell, who picked the wrong time to come out of retirement; Pat Sutherland, who learnt a little late that Ruddy was no pushover; Valenton Wint, who would have lost to Audley even if the election was on Valentine’s Day; Newton Amos, who fought a good fight but failed in his promise to retire Bobby Pickersgill; Darren Powell, who just couldn’t produce a bouncer to dislodge JC; Delano Seivright, whose first parliamentary contest ended in failure like that of his famous PNP relative ‘The Commodore’ in 1955; Richard Parchment, whose early admission that he would be a one-term MP was amazingly prophetic; Michael Stern, who became the only JLP candidate to lose Clarendon North Western in an election won nationally by the party; Patrick Roberts, now a four-time loser to the five-star commander and who would be best utilised elsewhere; and Sharon Ffolkes-Abrahams, who just simply failed to compete with the charm, sincerity and veracity of a tough campaigner like Marlene Malahoo-Forte.
Political family dynasties continue to be a perennial feature of our elections, although there is a slight reduction in quantity this time. But Andrew and Juliet Holness established their own record as the first prime minister and party leader to sit in the House with his wife. Dr Peter Phillips and son Mikael have sat in the Lower House longer than the Manleys in the late 1960s, and while Pearnel Charles sits as the 17th Speaker of the House, his son Pearnel, Jr sits in the Senate as a state minister.
Daryl Vaz and Dr Wykeham McNeill are still serving as successors to their fathers who served on either side of the political fence, Ruddy Spencer and Fitz Jackson are sons of former JLP and PNP councillors, respectively, and Zavia Mayne and Keith Walford battled for St Ann South Western where Mayne’s mom Leleith Richards was the JLP councillor for the Gibraltar Division, and Walford’s dad Roy Walford was the PPP candidate in 1962.
James Robertson and Julian Robinson (along with Dr Peter Philips) are the only political grandsons in the present system; Luther Buchanan and Leslie Campbell the only political nephews, while Portia Simpson Miller is still accompanied by her cousins Everald Warmington, Noel Arscott, and Natalie Neita-Headley.
Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, who became Jamaica’s first woman to be assigned minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, has followed in the footsteps of her father Ambassador Anthony Johnson, who served as a JLP legislator prior to his diplomatic service. The defeat of Dr DK Duncan’s daughters Pat and Imani came as quite a shock to many people, but win or lose, they have certainly established their own record as the first pair of sisters to contest seats together in a parliamentary election.
The election turned out to be a nightmare for the pollsters (except the Trinidadian), for analysts and other psephologists, and a virtual Waterloo for all current turncoats, but the results produced a healthy mix of young and old members. The eldest are Mike Henry and Pearnel Charles, Snr, with Henry and Karl Samuda as the longest-serving elected members of the present Parliament on 35 ½ years of continuous representation since 1980.
Mrs Simpson Miller, who ranks third with just over 34 years of elected service, is the only PNP member (since 1944) to have exceeded 30 years in the Lower House. However, it cannot be much comfort for those who oppose large numbers of golden agers in Parliament when an unprecedented 16 (25.4 per cent) of the present 63 members have already served for over 20 years.
The stage is well set for the next phase of interesting analysis and speculation, as the election has produced a total of 18 marginal seats, 12 of which were on the 2011 list, seven are now held by the PNP, and of the 11 now held by the JLP, eight have had more traditional JLP representation.
But if the election results are anything to go by, the upcoming overdue parish council elections are lining up to be another humdinger, as they have revealed that from a vantage point of holding all 13 parish councils and the Portmore council, the PNP could retain only four councils and 111 divisions and Portmore, while the JLP could capture eight councils and 117 divisions, with a tie in Clarendon.
Now that both major parties have had to endure the ignominy of one-term status, it is quite clear that the Jamaican electorate is no longer prepared to put up with poor representation nor with policies from which they can derive no benefit. The PNP, in an effort to suppress blame and activate damage control, seem to be entangled in a web of uncertainty regarding leadership and the restoration of core values as the united force it once was.
The new JLP Administration has settled in, has largely hit the ground running, has made some rather excellent Cabinet appointments within the ambit of a traditionally smaller entity than the PNP’s usual 20-odd, has had a few hiccups, and do have their work cut out to fulfil all of those commitments made to the nation.
For Andrew Holness and company, the easy part is over… now the real work has only just begun.
– Troy Caine is a political historian, analyst and commentator.
trodencorp@gmail.com