Dear Editor,

Despite what members of the political directorate may say, it is plainly obvious that we are in election season. In fact, this writer would say that the country has been primed for and expecting an election for well over a year. Certainly, this has been the longest campaign season we have witnessed in recent memory.

It is also no secret that, regarding electioneering, the incumbent Administration has a significant advantage: date setting. Only one man, along with his group of advisors, knoweth the day or the hour. Over the years, it has been standard practice for governments to offer inducements (if not outright bribes and outlandish promises) to the electorate when an election is upon them. Readers old enough will recall the infamous “run with it” statement by a former minister of finance and other budget-busting proposals set forth by sitting governments in order to endear themselves to those of us who vote.

The general election is expected this year, no later than September. I am no attorney or constitutional expert, so I will leave Minister Marlene Malahoo Forte and her colleagues to quibble about when the elections are “constitutionally due”. But with the polls essentially upon us, we have noticed a slew of projects coming onstream: ribbons being cut with dizzying frequency, bus after bus after bus landing, hospital administrative wings being opened, new water systems (both residential and agricultural) being commissioned, and the list goes on. It is against this backdrop that the question must be asked: Is this a flagrant attempt by a panicked Government at, as the Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding said, “giving the impression that good things are happening”?

The problem with this notion is that it is both illogical and untrue. Recall that Dr Nigel Clarke, in what proved to be his final presentation as finance minister in March 2024, went into great detail about the horrors of the public procurement process and the guidelines that attend it. We have long bemoaned the sluggishness of the public bureaucracy, which chokes announced projects and programmes almost to death.

Very rarely in this country does any major project move from conceptualisation or announcement to completion before 18-36 months. This is a fact. It then stands to reason that, by simple mathematics, the ribbons being cut this year are for projects that would have been set in motion as far back as 2022/2023, if not before. And this timeline does not take into consideration the near three-year chunk taken out of the developmental timeline by COVID-19. Many seem eager to forget that between 2020 and 2022 the Government was wholly focused on keeping the citizenry alive while preventing itself from going broke. There was no time and very little money for capital expenditure.

How then can it be attempting to buy votes in an election year when what we are seeing are the fruits of processes engaged years before? Is it that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) planned, as far back as 2021, to take the 2025 General Election right down to the wire and set about laying a platform of projects and programmes specifically designed to culminate four years later? Anyone who would have you believe that would make Prime Minister Andrew Holness out to be a master strategist, gifted with other-worldly foresight and the confidence of a lesser god. I am not so convinced.

Needless to say, this onslaught of infrastructural development is rather problematic for the Opposition. For the better part of three years, the People’s National Party (PNP) have been going about the country, telling anyone who will that Holness is personally corrupt. It has been its main message. The long-awaited Integrity Commission report, which was to be so damning as to trigger an immediate general election (according to Julian Robinson), failed to conclude that Holness illicitly enriched himself, or stole anything. So that horse is dead.

There hasn’t been a proper corruption scandal in years. Major crimes and murders are at record lows. Inflation is under control. The economy is stable. Debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is heading in the right direction. The PNP is running out of things to criticise. So now it has redirected its attacks to the development agenda of the Government, making ludicrous statements about the age of imported buses, promising to pay taxi men to carry children to school, and quipping that the Government is cutting ribbons found in the hairs of schoolgirls.

I never thought I would live to see the day that a parliamentary Opposition would seek to ridicule a sitting Government for doing too much work. But, as an acquaintance of mine likes to say, “Interesting times are ahead.”

Oyeton Clarke

oyetonclarke@gmail.com