It may come as a surprise to many that the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) one-seat majority in the Jamaican Parliament would actually cause them to function as if their majority were 10 times that number, but that state of affairs currently holds because of the comedy that has currently become the People’s National Party’s (PNP) operating routine. This is because for every day that Portia Simpson Miller remains ensconced as the leader of the PNP it provides the glue that serves to strengthen the JLP’s hold on the political reins of the country.

Since the close of the 1970s, and the departure of the “great conceptualiser” Michael Norman Manley within two years of his return in 1989, the PNP has stuck to the strategy of having on board someone with the ability to rev up its mass support. Manley had in the early 1970s, successfully transferred the Marxist term “lumpenproletariat” to the huge band of underprivileged Jamaicans previously unrepresented in early post-colonial Jamaica. In a Jamaica that did not work for most, political rhetoric and a mass identification strategy gave ordinary Jamaicans an identity and a political messiah who seemed to understand the language of the underprivileged.

Manley’s political leadership style appealed to the masses, along with the policies that he raised, giving Jamaicans a taste of the

Politics of Change; providing and strengthened A Voice at the Workplace, even as his political leadership eventually took us as a people Down the Up Escalator.

When Michael departed, Portia Simpson became that voice and provided the personality to (in some respects) fill the void created by Manley’s departure. “Mama P” or “Sista P” was for the lumpen proletariat, that voice, even after the group had shed the title of lumpens — it became a different time politically. Socialism had exited stage right and Percival J Patterson had converted the PNP into a left of centre, but razor-sharp, election-winning machine. It was a unit in which Simpson Miller played her part throughout those years as she became the voice of the otherwise voiceless.

For most of that 25-year period “Sista P” was endeared to the masses — even with the rapidly shifting political winds. Ideologies had become redundant and Edward Seaga’s continued political presence became the PNP’s best political gift as it scored one political triumph after another. During that period, though, the electorate’s composition had slowly begun to change. This was never an accident, but a direct consequence of the 1970s policies that had slowly delivered a growing educated population.

In 1976 only about three per cent of the Jamaican population had a university education. By 2006 that number had increased to over 17 per cent, and even with our problems at the secondary level, we had succeeded in delivering a largely better educated population. Also, between 2006-2016, broader penetration of computer and cellphone technology meant that the population received its information though multiple channels, and the younger electors had become more indirectly involved in the process, but not via the traditional modalities.

In a modern political arena the PNP’s archaic tools had become redundant. Michael Manley’s vision of an egalitarian society was being realised but the party that he had used to create and deliver it had lost connection with that vision and, as a result, failed to notice this significant development.

In the 2005 period, when Portia Simpson Miller wrested the leadership of the party from the multiple challengers, including the well-lettered Drs Blythe, Davies and Phillips, she enjoyed a near 70 percentage point popularity among voters across the country. However, by the mid-2007 General Election her immense popularity was whittled down to such a level that Bruce Golding thrashed the PNP into Opposition and seeming redundancy. It was a signal to the PNP as to its relevance in the new political dispensation; but this was never heeded.

That the JLP shot itself in the foot is a matter of record. Many in the PNP preferred to read this as a resurgence of the party and a demonstration of the capacity of its maximum leader Portia Simpson Miller. The truth be told, anyone could have beaten the hapless JLP at the time as the party had simply committed political suicide with the Tivoli-Dudus-Manatt mess and the inept management of the country’s economic affairs. It wasn’t that the PNP won, but more a case of the electorate firing the Government for its combined incompetence and intransigence.

Make no mistake, Portia Simpson Miller is perhaps the most powerful politician on the PNP team to date. She has served as an elected representative for more than 44 years, not only because she has been constantly returned by the voters but because of her iron-clad grip on the party’s delegate pool — the unit that decides who leads the party.

In the interim, we failed to notice that during the lead-up to the 2010 election, despite the burgeoning voters’ list, fewer voters were participating. In 2016 the same trap was resprung. This time, though, the signals would have been clearer…much clearer.

Firstly, this was an election that the party did not need to call, as it was not due for at least another year. At the same time, the election-winning machinery of the Patterson era was no longer being maintained. According to the analysts, some 30,000 new voters were added to the list and the PNP had no knowledge of who or where those voters were. Candidate selection problems that surfaced were allowed to run largely unchecked, and rancour among candidates and party executives allowed to play out in the public domain.

The icing on the cake was the disjointed unlinkable campaign, arguably the worst conducted in PNP political history. Not engaging the Opposition in the national debates that had become a developing Jamaican political feature, and allowing the JLP’s “tax plan” to fly unmolested underlines the fact that at the leadership level the PNP was akin to a rudderless ship in a stormy sea.

Today, nothing has changed. Portia Simpson Miller’s leadership, or the lack thereof, has lost the party two elections and still manages to remain unchanged. Based on the news coming out of the party regarding the decision to not challenge the “maximum leader” at the next annual conference, it will remain business as usual, where the party expects to continue doing the very same things but is expecting a different result. Such a state of affairs is set to become the JLP’s biggest gift…much bigger than its one-seat majority. And in the process, like Seaga was to the PNP, Portia Simpson Miller will be the JLP’s “Rock of Gibraltar”.

Richard Hugh Blackford is a self-taught artist, writer and social commentator. He shares his time between Coral Springs, Florida, and Kingston, Jamaica. yardabraawd.com Send comments to the Observer or richardhblackford@gmail.com.