The biggest opponent of Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidates in the next local government and/or general election will not be their opposite numbers from the People’s National Party (PNP). And the biggest opponent of PNP candidates will not be their competitors from the JLP. Apathy will be their biggest opponent.

If Prime Minister Andrew Holness were to announce the holding of our 17th parish council elections or our 19th general election since universal adult suffrage in 1944 at the same time that might well spark renewed and or heightened interest in both.

Some, who know far more about the intricacies of elections than me, have said that Jamaican taxpayers could benefit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars if both elections were held simultaneously. Consider this: “Government Senator Charles Sinclair is the latest public official to advocate the holding of parliamentary and local government elections on the same day, saying that doing so would save the country at least $1 billion.

” ‘Let us have local and central elections in one process. We have rationalised several areas of government, so why can’t we rationalise the process of elections? It costs $1.5 billion to put on local or general [elections] — make one spend, or you bump it up to $2 billion, and you have one election instead of spending $3 billion in possibly one year,’ he reasoned.” (Jamaica Observer, November 1, 2022)

Consider this too: ” ‘Taxpayers could see a huge windfall of nearly $750 million if Jamaica holds both the local government and general elections together… Even in the COVID-19 era, we estimate that we could hold both elections for under $2 billion,’ Director of Elections Glasspole Brown told The Gleaner.” (June 10, 2020)

I will delve into the ‘2-in-one election’ as we say in the streets in an upcoming piece. But for now the primary focus is on the political beast which will be the biggest opponent of the candidates from 89 Old Hope Road and 20 Belmont Road in the next national election(s).

Apathy or acute lack of interest in our electoral process, this by the majority of eligible voters, is rapidly consuming the oxygen which feeds our democracy.

The stark realities

Recall the startling 37 per cent voter turnout in our 18th parliamentary election, on September 3, 2020, and 30 per cent in our 16th local government election, which was held on November 28, 2016. In more granular terms the voter turnout of 30 per cent means that of the 1,849,012 electors on the voters’ list at the time only 549,503 bothered to cast their ballots.

In the September 3, 2020 general election there were 1,913,410 registered electors on the voters’ list, but only 713,082 felt sufficiently motivated to cast their ballots. In this general election the JLP won 49 seats and the PNP won 14. The 37 per cent turnout on September 3, 2020 was a decline from 48.37 per cent in the February 25, 2016 polls, in which the JLP won 33 seats and the PNP 30.

“Higgins, the COVID-19 pandemic and its deadly impact was the reason for the historically low 37 per cent turn-out,” some will doubtless say. I am sure dozens of Jamaicans did indeed stay away from the polls on September 3, 2020 to avoid increasing their exposure to the deadly and highly transmissible novel coronavirus. But, this fact, for obvious reasons, cannot be proffered as a credible explanation for the reality that voter turnout has been falling steeply over the last 30 years.

Noted pollster Don Anderson, in an insightful piece titled Is Jamaican democracy at risk? Significant declining voter turnout suggests so, noted among other things: “Voter turnout has shown significant decline since the election of 1989. Prior to that election voter turnout averaged a healthy 82 per cent per election up to the election of 1980. The 1983 election was boycotted by the PNP and in the next election of 1989, 78 per cent turned out to vote. Between 1992 and 2020, the average voter turnout was 56 per cent, with an all-time low of 38 per cent in 2020.” (The Gleaner, March 12, 2023)

Over many years I have been using this space to, among other things, draw attention to spiralling voter disinterest in our national elections. Others have also been sounding a similar alarm. We all need to wake up before it is too late.

A civic duty

“For those who suffer with convenient, transitory and/or historical amnesia, they need occasionally to be reminded that there was a time in Jamaica, before universal adult suffrage in 1944, when the majority of those who look like me, 98 per cent of us, did not have a vote. There was a time in Jamaica when only those with property of a certain value had the franchise. Those who met the deliberate and racist criterion of property value invariably were white and male.” (Jamaica Observer, December 19, 2014)

I argued also in this piece that: “We cannot allow the sacrifices of our ancestors to go to waste,” and that, “Voting, as a duty, makes people take it more seriously.”

I also noted that, “Mandatory voting exists in over 30 countries, which include Australia, Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France [Senate only], Guatemala, Gabon, Italy, Peru, Paraguay, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, and Uruguay.” I still hold the view that voting in Jamaica should be mandatory.

I believe voting is a civic duty.

Those who embrace the mistaken notion that not voting is the best form of protest against corruption and bad governments are “cutting off their noses to spite their faces”, as we say in local parlance.

I agree with noted American novelists David Foster Wallace who famously said: “In reality, there is no such thing as not voting; you either vote by voting or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some diehard’s vote.”

I take a dim view of people who do not vote. Among other things, they seem not to appreciate that the right to vote in this country was secured through the shedding of the blood, sweat and tears by our ancestors. There was a time in this country when our election apparatus was severely fragmented, tattered and corrupt. The sacrifices of some very brave and outstanding Jamaicans, like the late Professor Gladstone E Mills, the first chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), and another former chairman of the ECJ Professor Errol Miller, helped to secure an apparatus revolution.

Facing down the beast

But, back to the great elephant in the room, apathy. One does not have to be a political savant to realise that apathy is metastasising.

These recent findings released on March 21, 2023 by Nationwide News Network (NNN) Blue Dot Polls should serve an another wake-up call: A growing majority of Jamaicans remain either undecided or expressed no interest in voting at 52 per cent. This is up from 49 per cent in 2022 and 41 per cent in 2021.

Now I know some are going to shout, “So what’s the big deal? Eligible voters are usually non-committal at the halfway stage in the life of any Administration.”

Yes, but, we cannot ignore the fact that several local scientific polls have found that the number of uncommitted or will not vote is rapidly increasing while turnouts on election day are getting smaller and smaller.

In the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, ideology, class, and overt Cold War schisms, what I term as anti-apathy ingredients, had a hugely polarising impact on people globally. These ‘barriers to apathy’ no longer have the same kind of sting.

We live in a different world today. Globalisation has ushered in many new attitudes and moods, which have seismically changed how we consume politics. Whether we like it or not, politics is a consumer good, which is traded in an ideas market.

Today’s voters are concerned with what have you done for me lately? And/or what will you do for me shortly? Pragmatism is king of the hill. Individual and independent status has diminished group loyalties. I believe this motivation is most pronounced in especially younger voters. Folks are no longer gung-ho on the promise of celestial bliss after they die. They want their heaven right here on Earth.

Political parties, in this context, need to ooze more than just party unity. They need to impress voters with more than just fine ideals. They need more than just sound leadership. Additionally, and importantly, they also need a keen understanding of changing and popular attitudes. This is how parties can best begin to de-fang apathy, I believe.

‘Samfie’ promises

Now recall that in the run-up to the September 3, 2020 General Election the PNP released a manifesto with a trailer-load of too-good-to-be-true promises. At the time I wrote, among other things: “The People’s National Party (PNP) released the big ticket items of its manifesto last Sunday. In summary, the contents reminded me of an expression attributed to English playwright and lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson: ‘What is new is not good; and what is good is not new.’ Johnson’s pithy attribution aside, 89 Old Hope Road seems to be totally oblivious of recent political mistakes which caused a fraternal party of the PNP, the UK’s Labour Party, to suffer its biggest shellacking since 1935.”

I also said, “Numerous political authorities submit that two political projectiles in particular; namely, Labour’s muddled general election message and utopian-like manifesto, scuttled the party’s ship. The manifesto had some very good ideas, but people were not convinced Corbyn would have been able to deliver them without astronomical increases in taxes. According to many experts in British politics, Corbyn’s Labour Party just did not convince voters they had done their ‘sums’ properly.

“The PNP seems to have learned nothing from the crashing political demise of Jeremy Corbyn. I see no real evidence in the PNP’s manifesto that Norman Manley’s party has done its sums either.

“I am even beginning to wonder if there were joint brainstorming sessions involving the PNP and the Jamaica Progressive Party (JPP), which, in a Nicodemus-like fashion, announced late last week that it was not going to contest the general election set for September 3, 2020, 11 days from today.” (Jamaica Observer, August 23, 2020)

Alice-in-Wonderland promises did not fool the majority of voters then and they will not fool them when the next national election is called. Voters today are saying, “Show me the money, now!” They know that fanciful promises will cause catastrophic damage to their bread and butter. Illogical and un-fundable proposals are not effective antidotes to apathy.

Recent polls

Consider these: ‘NNN/Bluedot Polls: JLP support on the decline’ (March 21, 2023). Their findings said, among other things: “With the margin of error at plus or minus 2.7 per cent, the two main political parties now have little separating them. The results would suggest a 33 to 30 split in Gordon House in favour of the governing JLP had Jamaicans been called to the ballot.”

And, ‘Dead heat — Poll reveals razor-thin margin in a PNP-JLP battle to govern’. The Gleaner story of March 12, 2023 said, among other things: “The governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) would find itself in a dogfight with the People’s National Party (PNP) to hold on to State power if national elections were called now.” The poll was commissioned by the PNP.

Some of my readers have asked me to comment on these findings. If these findings had come out a year or even six months before the next general election was due that would spell big trouble for the JLP. Last Sunday, I noted here that “political scholars say political parties that have been in power for consecutive terms typically go through four stages — fascination, admiration, disillusionment and contempt”. It is obvious which stage the JLP is going though. I also noted that: “It is at the point of disillusionment and contempt that the fat lady begins to sing. Her singing can best be silenced by the delivery of positive benefits/change which are felt in pockets of folks and seen on their dinner tables.” The JLP has time to set its house in order.

Ruling parties gain in the run-up to general elections. The PNP has to maintain its current momentum for two and half years. That is nigh impossible for an Opposition party, unless the Administration has a death wish. I think the PNP has peaked far too early. Given these and other factors which I have previously discussed here I am forecasting a third term for the JLP.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education and youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.

PULL QUOTE

I take a dim view of people who do not vote. Among other things, they seem not to appreciate that the right to vote in this country was secured through the shedding of the blood, sweat and tears by our ancestors. There was a time in this country when our election apparatus was severely fragmented, tattered and corrupt. The sacrifices of some very brave and outstanding Jamaicans, like the late Professor Gladstone E Mills, the first chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), and another former chairman of the ECJ Professor Errol Miller, helped to secure an apparatus revolution

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education and youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com