Robert BuddanAN EXCELLENT set of articles on the People's National Party (PNP) succession race in last Sunday's Gleaner allows us to draw the following conclusions on the present state of the contest:
(1) Phillips is leading the other candidates among party MPs, including female MPs, Cabinet ministers, members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), and party delegates.
(2) Phillips has the broadest national support across the regions, leading in four. Portia Simpson Miller's support is concentrated in Region Two (Kingston and St. Andrew).
(3) Most of the nine MPs who have not declared their position are Cabinet members (five), although three have not done so for understandable reasons. P.J. Patterson is party president, Robert Pickersgill is chairman, and Burchell Whiteman is general secretary.
(4) While Phillips leads among the declared Cabinet members (five), Omar Davies has the next best support (four), and Simpson Miller has two. These numbers include the candidates themselves.
(5) Apart from Patterson, Pickersgill and Whiteman, the undeclared members of the Cabinet are K.D. Knight, A.J. Nicholson and Philip Paulwell. The other non-declared MPs not belonging to the Cabinet are Ralston Anson, Donald Rhodd, Fenton Ferguson, and Derrick Kellier.
The above shows who is in front but the eventual outcome of the elections could have one of the following results:
(1) One candidate wins the party presidency and the necessary parliamentary majority needed to become Prime Minister. The most likely person at this point is Peter Phillips.
(2) One candidate wins the party presidency but another gets the support of the parliamentary majority. The two candidates most likely to split these positions are Portia Simpson Miller and Peter Phillips.
(3) Whichever candidate wins the party presidency, the parliamentary majority agrees, in the interest of unity, to support that person to be Prime Minister.
Considering the second possibility, the scenario could play itself out one way or the other:
(1) The party and its government accepts dual leadership as a democratic outcome, having its own advantages, being legitimate in some countries, and having some support within the PNP, especially among Paul Burke and his group.
(2) The party accepts dual leadership but only as a temporary measure and turns to the September conference where delegates are asked to vote again either to confirm that dual leadership or reconcile the positions of president and Prime Minister in one person.
ASSESSING THE POSSIBILITIES
Mr. Patterson, and presumably the broader party, has rejected the idea of dual leadership. To avoid this happening, the NEC might ask that the candidates who lose the contest for president decline nomination for the prime ministership. The party could intervene in this way if the votes at the party conference do not lead to a final and acceptable settlement.
As long as there are two separate systems for selecting a party and parliamentary leader, this quandary will arise for the PNP, as well as the JLP. By electing these positions on separate bases, the parties implicitly accept that dual leadership is an option that they wish to reserve. However, should they feel that it might cause more problems than it solves, they will need to consider changing party and national constitutions to say that the person who is Leader of Government/Opposition must be the same person who is leader of the party; or the other way around.
This would first require that these parties decide what kind of democracy Jamaica should be. Jamaica operates like both a parliamentary democracy and a party democracy. What is the difference, and why does it matter?
PARLIAMENTARY
AND PARTY DEMOCRACY
The concept of parliamentary democracy holds that Parliament is the seat of government and politics. Once party representatives are elected to Parliament, they serve Parliament first and parties second. Parliament has a life of its own. It predates and pre-empts political parties.
By contrast, the concept of party democracy maintains that the people form and elect the party to represent them. The party embodies the authority and the democratic will of the people. It is the party in Parliament that forms Government or Opposition. Parliamentary legislation must reflect the party's programme. Parliamentarians are accountable to their party. The party is primary.
These different conceptions of democracy raise the question, on what basis then should the Prime Minister be elected? Should that person be required to have the support of the majority in Parliament first and foremost, or should primacy be given to support from the party? Caribbean democracies are really ambiguous on this question.
Jamaica and the Commonwealth Caribbean have acted like both parliamentary and party democracies. On the one hand, party leaders and prime ministers are elected on separate bases. On the other hand, there is a case for the person who is parliamentary leader to be automatically accepted as party leader. Jamaica is constitutionally a parliamentary democracy. The Constitution recognises the Leader of Government and Opposition and says how they are to be determined. It makes no reference to political parties. At the same time, Jamaica can claim to be a party democracy in political terms. The parties were responsible for negotiating the Constitution, winning adult suffrage, and laying the basis for modern government. The parties were the historical foundations of democracy.
RECONCILING DUALITY
Caribbean leaders have been able to command both roles of party and government. However, probably no party succession in the region has been so open and competitive with such potential for dual leadership as the upcoming PNP elections have. Some might say that dual leadership would be good since it separates the otherwise concentrated powers of the party and parliamentary leader in one person. Others might say this concentration properly unites both forms of democracy in one person and besides, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
It might not come to this. Party delegates could decide to vote on a straight ticket, that is, to vote for a party president who has the support of the majority of parliamentarians. The succession campaigns might be wise, therefore, to direct themselves to the undecided MPs and not focus entirely on the delegates. Even though Peter Phillips' campaign team claims to have the support of 17 per cent or 50 per cent of the PNP MPs, he would want to strengthen his hand and go into the elections with a clear majority of MPs in his corner.
This puts some onus on the undecided MPs to declare themselves as soon as possible after the November NEC. If, as some speculate, the special conference will be called for late January, the November NEC might be the last meeting before that conference. It might also be a good idea to devote that NEC to the candidates, allowing them the final opportunity to make their pitch to this important voting body. This would provide a solid opportunity for the candidates to convince those still undecided and for them to prove to the party that whatever the outcome, they have a formula for uniting both party and the government after the big event.
Send your comments to Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or infocus@gleanerjm.com
