People who say that this Wednesday’s general election is the most consequential in Jamaica’s history will have difficulty selling that argument to older Jamaicans who lived through the 1970s and witnessed the ideological battle between left- and right-wing forces that played out in the 1980 parliamentary poll.

At that time Jamaica was basically a pawn in the Cold War, with then Prime Minister Michael Manley and his People’s National Party (PNP) espousing Democratic Socialism and enjoying close ties with Eastern bloc socialist and communist states. On the other side was then Opposition Leader Edward Seaga and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), disciples of capitalism who were friends of Western nations.

With the economy in ruins and the country highly polarised, the vote in 1980 basically determined our political and ideological future. The result was a landslide for the JLP following an election campaign that was the most violent in our history.

Today, while some in the PNP still pay lip service to that party’s long-standing democratic socialist tradition, the country is not polarised along ideological lines. That’s to the point at which political experts have concluded that there is very little difference between both major political parties.

So what we have going into this Wednesday’s general election are two parties that disagree on a number of policy issues and the manner in which those matters should be dealt with.

Since the official start of this campaign — which, thankfully, has been short — the electorate has been bombarded with promises from both sides. How many of those will be kept by the winner of the election is left to be seen, but we should always keep in mind that promises easily made on the hustings eventually come face to face with reality in governance.

It is against that background that we again urge both political parties to present to the country a detailed, credible plan to fund the income tax cuts they have proposed, and which, it appears, is shaping the battle for votes.

As we pointed out in this space yesterday and last Tuesday, there are a number of factors that will affect implementation of these proposals and the parties owe it to the populace to explain how they will effect policies with accompanying timelines, without undermining the country’s economic resilience or risking a reversal of the progress made over the last decade.

At this stage, two days away from the vote, the window to do just that is closing, but it can’t be difficult for the parties if they have carefully thought this out.

That so many other promises have been made this late suggests to us that there is a need for politicians to share with the populace, on a more frequent and consistent basis, their proposals for governance. Yes, some of that is done at the annual conferences of the political parties, and for that they must be commended.

But more can be done at the community and group levels, as was the case in the distant past when political education was regarded as important to our democratic process.

That level of engagement, we believe, should be made a priority for politicos going forward. Ensuring that more Jamaicans are equipped with solid information will redound to the benefit of the country.