JLP majority bad for democracy? Hogwash!
Dear Editor,The huge victory recorded by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the general election on September 3 has led to some people claiming it is bad for democracy. That’s undiluted hogwash with lime.
How can it be bad for democracy when it’s the will of the people? Democracy is only strong when the will of the people is upheld. If the will of the people was that they believed Andrew Holness needed a strong Opposition to keep him straight they would have given him what he had before the election and returned what the People’s National Party (PNP) also had.
The Jamaican people did not want it that way. They believed it was best to give him more than enough seats for a landslide. Why can’t these people go with the will of the people and shut up? If the Jamaican people had followed them and their reasoning, the JLP would have been voted out of office.
To constantly make the point that this win is bad for democracy is to tell the Jamaican people they are all a bunch of idiots. It is this very same condescending attitude of many of those privileged to be in academia and media, as well as those hypocrites that call themselves civil society groups, why many have stopped listening to them and are making up their own minds on electoral matters. That is one reason for the landslide. People ain’t stupid any more.
These same set of hypocrites did not voice such concerns in 2011 when the JLP got a similar beating from the PNP. At that time they praised Jamaica’s strong democratic tradition.
Now, all of a sudden the great Jamaican democratic tradition is under threat because the JLP is the one dishing out the beatings.
What is a threat to the democratic tradition of this country is these same set of hypocrites who are willing to dishonestly contort themselves into every different shape to fit their arguments in line with the PNP.
We the Jamaican people who voted to reject the PNP and all associated with them, including some in media, academia and civil society, remind you that Andrew nor the JLP have never used a state of emergency to lock up PNP officials. The PNP did it to Labourites.
Fabian Lewistyronelewis272@gmail.com
