Dear Editor,

Now that the dust has settled on the 2024 Local Government Elections, the experts have commenced the latest round of analysis of why the majority of registered electors opted to snub the two major political parties.

As usual, some are advocating a vote-at-all-cost position, even when electors are dissatisfied with the quality of candidates and the absence of substance or intellectual rigour in the election campaign.

This vote-at-all-cost position suggests there is something magical about marking an X beside a symbol and dipping one’s index finger into ink, even though our experience has shown that the major actors continue to fail the country and have displayed an outstanding inability to unite the populace around a common vision for the development of the country and the prosperity of all Jamaicans.

I challenge the vote-at-all-cost proponents to justify, with empirical evidence, how continued participation in and support for a broken, dysfunctional system will lead to its improvement.

I posit that most well-thinking Jamaicans are not fundamentally opposed to participating in the electoral process, they are simply opposed to participating in a system that has proven to be inimical to the holistic development of the country. Indeed, some will argue that all electors voted, but some opted to vote with the finger adjacent to the index finger.

Instead of pointing accusing fingers at those who are dissatisfied with the political status quo, we should be demanding genuine and fundamental constitutional reform to deepen and improve our democracy.

We should focus on getting politicians to elevate the political discourse to a level at which the discussion of issues and ideas take centre stage and gimmicks, comedy, endorsement of criminal activities, political tribalism, and victimisation are minimised, if not totally eliminated.

We should be demanding that politicians educate their supporters to stop seeing political campaigns as licence to flout the laws of the land. We should demand that politicians stop appealing to the base instinct of their supporters and instead motivate and empower them to be the best they can be.

We should demand that political meetings be less like comedy fests and more like information-sharing and political education sessions. We should demand that politicians stop exploiting the economically and socially vulnerable for selfish political gains. We must demand that our political practices stop creating marginalised communities of Jamaicans for the sole purpose of political exploitation.

More Jamaicans will participate in elections when we reform the constitution to make it easier for independent Jamaicans to be elected to Parliament and elevate the political discourse to include substance and intellectual rigour. Until then, we will continue to vote for none of the above.

Wayne Plummer

wayne.r.plummer@gmail.com