The most recent Don Anderson poll has placed the People’s National Party (PNP) 7.8 points ahead of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). After the results of the local government elections, I averred in this space that the JLP has a lot of work to do.

The party did not expect the drubbing it got in the elections. Even in places where the party was expected to do well, such as retaining the coveted Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), it lost the prize. Against this background it should have been clear to the party that all was not well and any attempt to pretend otherwise would be inconsistent with the reality on the ground and a recipe for future failures.

Now the competent and well-respected Don Anderson polling organisation has rendered another verdict, and perhaps more is to come. Unerringly, the message is: the party has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Whenever political polls do not comport with a preferred position there is a tendency to decry it or, worse, to savage the character and reputation of the pollster; thus, the JLP’s attempt to spin the results as not credible. JLP stalwart Everald Warmington was at it again, eviscerating the results and criticising the Don Anderson polling organisation as not being credible and untrustworthy.

We will admit that a poll is a mere snapshot of tendencies and sentiments of people at a particular time. The fact that they captured these sentiments does not necessarily render them inaccurate or irrelevant. These sentiments can change and change quickly, especially when the losing side has certain powers, such as the power of incumbency, as the JLP does, to effect outcomes.

What is clear to me is that this time around the sentiments that were captured in the recent poll are not irrelevant to how the population is beginning to view the JLP. The polls merely reinforced my own belief that the party has work to do. Into its second term in office, it is showing signs of the kind of complacency that bedevil two-term governments. And it is asking the people to trust it for a third term. But in very significant areas it is showing signs of incumbency fatigue. It has been besieged by a number of unforced legal errors and seems well on its way to suffer further humiliation in the case of the continued tenure of the Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn.

The attempt by the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC) to tender its report to Parliament without fulsome public engagement on constitutional reform, which many in the country envisaged, will come back to haunt the Government in significant ways. The Minster of Constitutional and Legal Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte has not spelt out to the public the contours of the CRC’s recommendation. However, she has said enough to engender revulsion on the part of those who want to see a clear and radical break with the past encapsulated in a president (or prime minister) directly voted for by the people. Again, we cannot accept the swapping of one dictator for another. The truth is that the prime minister of Jamaica, with the powers vested in him/her by the present constitution, is too powerful. There is more to be said, but look for the blowout when the report is finally tabled in Parliament.

Between now and the next general election, due by September 2025, the committee would be well advised to get back on the road, on social media (especially YouTube), and engage the people of Jamaica on their real views. A few cosmetic meetings scattered around the island, which were not even well attended, given the gravity of the subject of constitutional reform, will not suffice. There is a lot more work to be done and trying to rush the matter through Parliament before an early pending general election is foolhardy. Are we looking at another unforced error in the making?

All is not lost for the JLP. The party still has a lot of time between now and the next election to recoup and re-present itself as a party worthy of a third term. But it must listen more to what the ordinary person on the street is saying. It is all in the messaging. It is not fanciful when people say they are not feeling the macroeconomic gains of the Administration. The party must help them to understand why they are not feeling these gains at this time and what will be done to bring them closer to realising same.

This, too, is a dilemma which faces President Joe Biden and the Democrats in the USA as the country approaches the presidential election in November.

Good things are happening for both economies, but there is still too large a gulf fixed between the macro and micro benefits that the citizens can enjoy. The burden of incumbency in both countries is to give ordinary citizens the assurance that all is well or will be well. Without this assurance the tendency is to look to the other side.

Ryland Campbell

I met Ryland Campbell for the first time when he taught me English language in first form at St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS). I recall how I enjoyed that class.

There is one thing that he taught us that has stayed with me over the years. He told the class that when writing figures, write out the words from one to nine and use figures from 10 up.

He was a good and engaging teacher and was instrumental, in concert with the impeccable Mrs McDonald, my second-form English teacher, in cementing in me a love for English.

I have watched his progress as an entrepreneur over the years and how he loomed largely as one of the indigenous entrepreneurs who made waves in the financial industry. He never lost the engaging, quiet, unperturbed, and even humble disposition that I saw in him as a student. He has been a credit to the financial industry in Jamaica.

The fact that he survived the maelstrom of the financial meltdown of the 1990s speaks volumes to his tenacity, resilience, and the integrity he brought to his work.

This column prays that he will rest in peace and that God’s blessings will be upon his family at this time of their loss.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; The Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.