As the campaigns of both major political parties for supremacy in the upcoming general election due by September moves into full gear, one can expect the incendiary rhetoric from both sides to increase.

Lost in all this is any real desire to give the people a good sense of the policy decisions which can guide their votes. This thinking applies more to the People’s National Party (PNP) than it does the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). I draw this conclusion because the policies of the sitting JLP Government should be well known. After almost 10 years at the wicket, the people of Jamaica should have more than a passing idea of how the party has done in government and how it may perform in the future. On the campaign trail, spokespersons for the party, especially Prime Minister Andrew Holness, have been quite emphatic in pressing home what the Government has done and what it hopes to do if given the chance to continue in Government.

I say the onus is greater on the PNP for the precise reason that it has not been in power. After 10 years, people’s memory of what the party did when it formed the Government has faded. The pressure is, therefore, greater on it to convince the Jamaican people that it is ready to take up the mantle of power. If it does, what will be done differently to improve the lives of the Jamaican people? From my observation, and other commentaries I have seen from important sources, the PNP is doing a dismal job of outlining to people what it will do and how it will finance the grandiose promises which it, from time to time, eclectically parades for public consumption.

Telling people what you will do without any carefully thought-out and credible presentation of how you will achieve this will not gain any muster with the Jamaican people, who have grown very transactional in their political expectations. One does not even get the understanding that the various policy pronouncements are well coordinated within the party itself. One gets the impression that party members are going down several lanes and there is no off-ramp that brings them together onto one road with a set of carefully worked-out propositions that can grab the attention of the people. Thus, the PNP seems to be all over the place, with different spokespersons making pitches which do not seem to align with what could be considered integrated party thinking.

In the midst of this we see both parties majoring in minors. Take, for example, the matter of the kerfuffle between the PNP and JLP-governed St James Municipal Corporation under Mayor Richard Vernon. Outside of sheer political hubris, one cannot understand why the the municipality allowed this fuss over political signs to have reached the courts given all the expenditure of money and political capital that this entails.

The municipality claimed that it acted within its right to remove the PNP campaign signs. The PNP cried foul and brought the matter to the Supeme Court, which has halted the removal of the signs. The court has now ruled in favour of the PNP, citing unlawful action on the part of the municipality when it ordered that the signs be removed. It further ordered that the billboards be reinstated.

One hopes that this is the end of the matter and that political peeve and perhaps arrogance do not become motivating factors for an appeal. This is a matter that could have been settled by grown-ups sitting down in a room and arriving at a consensus.

But this is not how we do things in Jamaica, especially when it has strong political flavour. We have to score political points and indulge one-upmanship. Thus, to use a dental analogy, what could have been a routine filling of a tooth becomes a full-blown root canal intervention. There is too much anger and antagonism in our national politics. It does reflect the wider society, but if those who are offering themselves for office are the architects of this, then where are we going as a nation.

Attention must also be drawn to the JLP’s use of ‘badmindism’ as a political narrative. The use of this terminology seems to be emerging as a central narrative in JLP political rhetoric. As we know in Jamaica, when you accuse a person of being ‘badmind’ you are saying that the person is envious of your achievements and thus harbours ill will towards you for your success. I cannot see how this aligns with any criticism regarding policy. The critic might get it wrong, such as the Opposition spokesman for national security, who said the Government does not deserve any credit for the falling murder rate. But was he ‘badmind’ when he made this remark or just being plainly disingenuous?

I do not think that calling the other side ‘badmind’ because it disagrees, however vehemently, with a policy, makes any sense at all. Using the term occasionally may be appropriate, but to make it a central theme or an ongoing narrative of your political campaign philosophy is to demean your message and may be seen as insulting the intelligence of the Jamaican people. It sounds good to party diehards, but to the thousands of independents, which you have to convince to gain electoral success, you may be whistling in the dark with this rhetoric.

We call for a campaign devoid of incendiary rhetoric and the demeaning of opponents. Both sides of the political spectrum are battling for the people’s support. That should only be given to those who have shown a good track record of performance. Similar to buying stocks on the stock market, the caveat should never be missed that past performance is never an indicator of future performance. What is always constant in people’s minds is respect for others combined with a heavy dose of truth-telling and fidelity to promises made.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. He hosts a podcast — Mango Tree Dialogues — on his You Tube channel. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or
stead6655@aol.com.

Raulston Nembhard