Peter EspeutTHEY DON'T call it the "Silly Season" for nothing. It is a time of escalating, outlandish and improbable election promises soon forgotten. We are now in the middle of a series centering on education, where each party is trying to outdo the other in promising freeness. So far the JLP began with freeness in tuition up to secondary school, and the PNP has replied with freeness in overseas examination fees. To come, I'm sure, is free lunch, free school books, free school uniforms, and free bus fare.
Missing in the furore is the promise that there will be enough high schools and high school places so that every Jamaican child will be able to attend high school; that would seem to me to be a more important promise, which will immediately mean the abolition of the agony of the Common Entrance Examination, or rather its morph, the GSAT. The season has not yet got that silly!
Missing is the promise that children will actually learn to read in Jamaican schools, never mind learn how to think and reason, and solve problems, and maybe learn some meaningful history, science and maybe a useful foreign language. The season has not yet got that silly! We are still at the stage where Mr. Seaga wants to make our poor quality education free, and Mr. Patterson's government is defending their policy of requiring poor people to pay for the substandard education of their children - at least for two more years! The contempt of the Jamaican people continues!
But this is not how the silly season began. It started when the two major political parties promised that there would be a violence-free election. I am always amazed at the two-facedness of both the PNP and JLP when it comes to garrisons and gunmen and political thuggery: on the one hand they deny that they have gunmen and political enforcers, and on the other they promise that there will be no violence. The only way you can seriously promise "no political violence" is if you control the perpetrators of political violence. When the two parties sign peace treaties, they are admitting that each has their own private army, and that they have passed on certain orders.
Missing in the orgy of peace promises is that the guns will be turned in and that the garrisons will be dismantled (i.e. that swords will be hammered into ploughshares, and spears into sickles, and that there will be no more preparation for war). The season has not yet got that silly! The two sides will remain armed camps, each with their weapons carefully trained on the other, waiting for the next explosion.
The good thing about that particular promise of pre-election peace is that you don't have to wait post-election to see if it is kept. We already know that it has been broken - by both sides.
I am surprised that the Jamaican people - the churches and the private sector - have accepted this cold war as the status quo! And so many still provide funding to the political parties which they know will go to buy these guns and pay off these thugs! We get what we pay for!
The other promise in this first series was called the "Political Code of Conduct" where both sides tried to introduce some amount of ethics into the election campaign. They promised there would be no graffiti, but both have decided to litter streetlight poles with partisan flags. Does this not breach the spirit of the Code? Is this practice not a trespass on the works of the Jamaica Public Service Company, for which both political parties can be dragged into court?
What do the flags mean? PNP Zone? Vote JLP or else? I find these flags sinister! They seem to be an attempt by both parties to extend garrison politics across the length and breadth of Jamaica. I would feel less bothered if I saw both orange and green flags on some light poles, but it is one or the other, which means tribalism. What is missing from the campaign is the promise that tribal politics will come to an end, but the season has not yet got that silly! In Jamaica, political campaigning is an open celebration of tribalism! What I want to see is the JPS prosecute the political parties for trespass, but the season has not yet got that silly!
Also missing from the Political Code of Conduct is the promise that buses in political motorcades will not be overloaded, with people hanging out the doors and windows, and on the roofs. How in conscience can the police enforce the law on public passenger vehicles when buses hired by our lawmakers openly and flagrantly break the law?
