It has been a long while since we have seen such an intense battle for the island’s municipal corporations as demonstrated in the past few weeks leading up to Monday’s vote.

As we argued in this space on Monday, the 2024 local government elections took on the look and feel of a referendum on the performance of the Government, largely because the all-important parliamentary general election is constitutionally due in 18 months.

Let’s also recognise that the prime minister does have the right to send Jamaicans to the polls before then if he so wishes.

Against that background, the leaders of our two major political parties expended much time and energy beating the pavements and pressing flesh in an effort to secure victory.

Up to press time last night the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) had not completed the official vote count, telling us that so far preliminary results indicate that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has won seven of the island’s 14 municipal corporations, while the People’s National Party (PNP) has taken four.

Additionally, the EOJ said, there is a tie in Kingston and St Andrew, with both parties taking 20 divisions each, and in Clarendon 11 divisions each.

We’ll have more to say after the results are finalised. Until then, though, we must say we are disappointed, though not surprised, that the voter turnout was an abysmal 29.6 per cent.

Why?

We have been engaged in a slow march down this road of political indifference for some time, and frankly we haven’t been able, as a society, to engage the mass of our people for the greater good of our democracy.

The seeds of this unfortunate place in which the country now finds itself were planted decades ago and nurtured by politicians and their blinkered supporters who placed party and individual interests above the nation.

So Monday’s voter turnout is a new low, coming after the 30 per cent in the 2016 local government election and 37 per cent in the 2020 general election, which was the lowest since 1983 when the PNP boycotted that snap poll called by then Prime Minister Edward Seaga.

While Jamaica has come a far way since the days when skulduggery influenced the outcome of elections, there still exists deep public scepticism about the sincerity of those who offer themselves for representational office. Also, younger Jamaicans are not being drawn to any national, sustained, education programme aimed at igniting a passion to participate in the country’s development.

Such an effort has to transcend raw partisan politics and must be guided by the ideal of participatory democracy embracing consultation at all levels of the society.

Political patronage which, unfortunately, is still too prevalent, cannot take us to the point where more of our citizens will feel motivated to engage in the electoral system and exercise their right to vote.

This is a task for more than our political parties. It is an all-of-Jamaica assignment, and it can be accomplished. Anyone who doubts that need only compare the relationship that now exists between supporters of both the JLP and PNP, compared to 30 years ago.

Tolerance has replaced antagonism, in large measure. That’s a platform on which to build the kind of country of which we can be even more proud.