Martin HenryWE ARE faced with two significant elections over the next few days. None of us as Jamaicans will have a vote in the US presidential election next Tuesday. Most of us will not have a vote in the JLP leadership election next Saturday, not even rockstone Labourites. Yet both are set to change our world in big ways.
The Bush-Kerry race for the White House is as neck and neck as the Bush-Gore race of 2000. Not every one is as prophetically confident as our brother in the diaspora, Cargill Kelly, who has written home in a letter to The Gleaner from Virginia wanting to be the first to say that John Kerry will win the US presidential election on November 2 in a close contest.
There is far less uncertainty with the JLP election. Bruce's self-proclaimed landslide seems a certainty. A pity some other people, especially people not sharing the old guard background and expertise of Charles and Golding, are not in the race. The PNP succession race is going to boil down too to two strong contenders.
US ELECTIONS
To a degree never before seen in the history of the world until quite recently, the US elections are global elections. They determine who will lead the world's sole hyper-power, something which will affect every human being in very basic ways. America is rich enough, strong enough and economically agile enough to take care of the domestic chequebook issues which her fat, comfortable and soft citizens tend to make flaming election issues.
The real issues in this the 228th year of the Republic is the survival of freedom and democracy on the domestic scene and the exercise of imperial power beyond the border.
Goaded on by the bogeyman of terrorism, Americans are more and more willing to trade freedom (with its attendant discomforts and responsibilities) for security (with its attendant restrictions and
controls).
The 'strong' president is in high demand. But whoever wins will be leading the American Republic along a pathway pretty much determined by history and current geo-politics. Some would add determined by destiny as well.
Styles will vary; substance not very much. Character will vary; policy not very much. The truth is, no one can now rise to the position of presidential candidate who is a serious misfit for the fundamental American agenda of the early 21st century.
NECK AND NECK RACE
The neck and neck race may be read in one way as reflecting a nation divided 50/50 over the
lesser issues on the table; or read in exactly the opposite way as a nation united on the fundamentals not visibly on the table and can't easily make up its mind about who best to trust to advance that
agenda.
Some of our pundits are suggesting that "US interest in Jamaica only symbolic" (Gleaner Sunday, October 17). America, with increasing consciousness of its unrivalled power, is more and more adopting a unilateralist stance in the world as great powers have historically done. But for some while yet a veneer of multilateral legitimacy will be both desirable and useful. Small dependent states like Jamaica with a big voice and a vote like everybody else in international forums like the UN and the OAS will be coming under increasing pressure to behave the right way, speak the right way and vote the right way in exchange for aid and migration access. We heard a tiny roar of the dragon trying to get the Caribbean to line up in support of the war in Iraq.
ELECTION AGENDA
The JLP election agenda is much clearer than the American. Wanted: a man to beat the PNP and usher in a long overdue "JLP time". The PNP will be defensively forced to elect the person deemed best able to stave off the new leadership JLP challenge, having lost their winning card in Edward Seaga.
The push from below for old style scarce benefits garrison politics may well overwhelm the finest idealism. The top dogs, at home or abroad, can hardly be expected to dis the system which gave them their place unless they are persons of steel and vision, willing to place country above party and state above self, and willing to sacrifice.>
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
