Seaga now being seen through different lenses.
Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor
SO EDWARD Phillip George Seaga has - for the first time at last - debunked the myth, propagated as much by his colleagues in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) as by his detractors in the People's National Party (PNP), that the JLP could never again win national elections with him as its leader.
The conventional wisdom was that not having won contested national elections since the October 30, 1980 General Election, Mr. Seaga was a liability to the party and, therefore, should quit the post of leader which he has held since February 1989.
Now he is being examined through different lenses since the Local Government elections on Thursday, June 19, when the JLP trounced the ruling PNP by taking control of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation and 11 of the island's 12 Parish Councils, Westmoreland being the exception. Previously, the PNP had controlled the KSAC and all 12 Parish Councils.
'BETRAYED"
According to JLP insiders, their party won the nation's 13th Local Government elections because the people, having seen what has been happening the country since the General Election of October 16, 2002, "feel betrayed" and, therefore, registered their disapproval of that betrayal by voting against the PNP.
People were made to feel that everything was on target and hunky-dory, an influential JLP insider said, then they were hit by tax increases and price increases, and so they felt betrayed.
But this, of course is more a negative against the PNP, than a positive for the JLP.
So, why did the JLP win?
With the disgust because of the feeling of betrayal, coupled with the JLP's selection of candidates a lot of new faces, young people, bright people and the party carrying its message islandwide, "the people were more receptive to the JLP than to the PNP which had nothing new to tell them."
STRATEGY
And what does this victory mean for the JLP?
The JLP must now seriously prepare itself, in all respects, to take over the Government at an early date, according to the party insider. This preparation must involve having a clear strategy on how it is going to run Local Government and make it effective, preparing personnel for responsibility as ministers in a new Government and, identifying with some clarity, strategies to change the current overall economic situation.
Q: And how will this preparation jibe with Mr. Seaga's statement on February 18 that "... the Opposition will now pursue a course to oppose, oppose and oppose this regime until we bring it down (as).... it is the only course available to seek relief from mismanagement and corruption which is wrecking all hopes for Jamaica's future"?
One JLP insider doesn't think the party no longer has to "oppose, oppose, oppose in the sense that the people having now spoken this decisively, the JLP will be less strident as it will have to be listened to now".
THREE TERMS
Q: In winning on Thursday, what did the JLP do that it hadn't done during the campaign for the October 2002 General Election?
A: Frankly, I don't think anything much. It is just that the people were prepared in 2002 to give the PNP one more chance.
Q: But why, the PNP having been in power for three terms, since 1989?
A: It has to do largely with the fact of Mr. Seaga's longevity. Being around for so long he didn't appear to be an attractive alternative and things didn't then appear to be so bad. Now things have gotten that much worse, and even though he is not overly attractive, you resort to something that is at least different and can put some stability to things.
POSSIBILITIES
Q: So what now for Mr. Seaga? Is he going to hand over to Bruce Golding at the JLP conference come November 2003, get on his horse and ride off into the sunset?
A: Put it this way. He can now say, 'Look, I have debunked the myth that I can't win anything'. Then he can leave in fine style. Or he can say, 'Well having done this, let me just taste it one more time, and go'. Those are the possibilities.
What did the PNP do to try to win Thursday's Local Government elections, a PNP insider was asked, the party having in October 2002 defeated the JLP 34 to 26 in the national parliamentary elections for the 60 seats in the House of Representatives?
In the September 1998 Local Government elections, it had humiliated the JLP by taking control of the KSAC and all 12 Parish Council. And bear in mind that the PNP has been the party in government since February 9, 1989 more than 14 years!
According to a PNP insider, the party had focused its campaigning thrust on a few selected Parish Councils that it thought it could win or wrest back, the JLP having made serious inroads in them in the October 2002 General Election. Examples are St. James, St. Catherine, St. Ann, St. Elizabeth.
The thinking was that once the PNP could get out enough of its core supporters, then that should take it past the winning post.
"There wasn't any wide net" as he put it. "The campaigning wasn't revved up on a national scale".
So, why did the PNP lose?
FACTORS
A combination of several factors, the most obvious being that the PNP wasn't able to get out enough of its core supporters.
According to the party insider, the strategy going into the campaign, which was also a consideration of costs to keep it low-keyed seemed to have backfired for the PNP. As he sees it, the fact is that hard-core supporters just love the excitement of the hustings the motorcades and the bandwagons and all the hype. The absence of all the traditional hoopla meant that fewer supporters turned out to vote. Apparently when many comrades saw the party's low-keyed campaign, they probably felt the Local Government Elections weren't terribly important as the PNP already formed the Government.
P. J. Patterson, the PNP president, had pointed out repeatedly during the campaign that whatever the outcome of the June 19 Local Governments, he would still be the Prime Minister and his party would still be in charge of central government.
WEAKNESSES
But below the surface, according to the party insider, there were some inherent systemic weaknesses that the party must now look at seriously.
One has to do with the culmination of differences in certain constituencies and divisions among party workers and supporters about who should be selected as candidates.
Because of that, some groups which might not have got their candidates selected, simply laid down arms (not literally, of course) and didn't go out to vote. That, in part, accounts for the low voter-turnout.
But this is not peculiar to the PNP; the JLP is similarly afflicted, and according to people close to both parties, increasingly, it is becoming a worrying factor.
In the view of the PNP insider, it wasn't because all of Jamaica had turned out to vote for the JLP why it won the elections on Thursday; it was the JLP which had brought outits hard-core supporters to vote. And the PNP just wasn't able to do likewise.
ORGANISATION
He believes that structurally and systematically, the PNP has a lot of work to do to recover ground in terms of its organisation, especially mobilising its workers to do what they have to do.
Any party which is unable to get its workers to go into a division or constituency to carry out its canvass on the ground, lane-to-lane, street-to-street, door-to-door, so the party could determine how it stood, and make its projections therefrom is in problems.
"And I think there has been a gradual and consistent breakdown in many areas of those basic things in the party", the insider said, suggesting that the PNP hierarchy must act quickly to take these issues in hand.
"For the first time I think the JLP has got it right where some basic organisational things are concerned", the PNP insider said. "And they have learned from us. And while they are learning from us we are allowing it it to slip more."
NEW BLOOD
"In addition," he said, "the process needs some new blood that it is not able to attract, on our side, in sufficient numbers."
"Overall," he says, "I think this loss might do us more good than bad, in the sense that if we are worth our salt we will learn the lesson from it and we will be able to correct the deficiencies in time for the next big one.
"My fear going into it was that if we came away with any semblance of a decent victory in the Local Government elections, it would mask the inefficiencies and the people wouldn't necessarily see them or accept them, and be willing to deal with them.
N. E. ST. ANN
"I think the best thing that could have happened to us in the run up to the 2002 General Election was to have lost North East St. Ann because some problems were glaring and you had to fix them ... And we were able to fix them ... to come through ... But I think since the win, again we have dropped our hands some more and it is for the party to seriously deal with some of these shortcomings. There is no shortcut to it. It's a good thing that it is so far in advance of when the next one is constitutionally due. Because it gives you time to do it. Whether or not they have the will and the resources to do it is another thing. But I think it might do some good."
ERODED
It is obvious that the PNP just was not able to entice enough of its loyal supporters to vote, and even its traditional bedrock hard-core support was eroded. Instead of voting for the JLP, they simply stayed away. Even some die-hard PNP supporters these days complain not only about feeling the economic pinch, but what is worse, they don't see their lot getting better anytime soon.
The voters were not listening much either to the PNP's discourses on local government issues or the JLP's call to use the elections as a referendum on the performance of central government just eight months after the last general election.
They were registering their protests against high taxes, high prices, scarce jobs, scarcer employment opportunies for the youth, a frightening crime rate and a general sense of lack of hope in the country.
The JLP's campaign organisation from the October 2002 General Election was pretty much still in place for Thursday's polls and it was reactivated with rewarding results.
Local Government Elections are scheduled again in 2006 and the General Election, the year after.
The PNP is determined to regain control of the Parish Councils and the KSAC and to retain its hold on central government. Equally, the JLP is bent on being the party in power the next time around.
Whatever happens, the people of Jamaica, not only JLP and PNP, must be the beneficiaries of the creative thoughts and imaginative strategies of the Government and the Opposition as the unequivocal message of the electorate on Thursday to both parties was, "Perform to enable us to improve our day-to-day condition, or else..."
