Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
Dr. Omar Davies (centre), Minister of Finance and Planning and People's National Party (PNP) presidential candidate, is hugged by wife, Rose (left), while Donald Buchanan (right), Minister of Water and Housing and campaign team member and a crowd of supporters look on. The group was at the PNP's Old Hope Road, St. Andrew headquarters for Dr. Davies' nomination for the party presidential election to be held on February 25. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
"MRS. DAVIES isn't a rum bar kind of person," the campaign worker reassured The Sunday Gleaner news team awaiting a long day of politics following the candidate's wife on a road trip to meet party delegates in Portland on Tuesday.
This was one of many trips Dr. Rose not Omar Davies says she has been taking up and down the country talking to People's National Party (PNP) delegates. All this on behalf of her other half Dr. Omar, Member of Parliament for South St. Andrew and Minister of Finance and Planning, in his attempt to lead the PNP, and at least until the next general election, Prime Minister of Jamaica.
The theme, or gimmick, of the 'Campaign for Prosperity' is to make Jamaica 'World Class in 10 years', the message being that education makes you socially mobile, a case in point being Omar Davies' own family. Among his siblings, Carlton Davis is the Cabinet Secretary and Rae Davis the outgoing head of the University of Technology. Dr. Rose is herself a lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Institute of Education, a specialist in the field of early childhood education.
The family she married into did not do badly for the offspring of a humble couple a cane farmer and a housewife from Linstead, reminds Dr. Rose. It is an example of the kind of social mobility they have had to work hard to convince the delegates about. After all, a finance minister, in any country, is not naturally the most popular or identifiable with the issues concerning the voting public.
The challenge is obvious, and so far the results scream from a graffiti in his own constituency , which reads 'Omar out'.
Ouch!
"Initially, the feeling was, well, he just can't cover that ground now. They really don't know Omar the person. They saw him as this hard tax person, a lot of people were very surprised. But he can sit down with them, play dominoes. He's a regular person," Mrs. Davies told The Sunday Gleaner.
But can he really convince delegates and others that Jamaica will be world class with Omar in 10 years?
But at the end of the drive from Kingston, up a hill in Sherwood Forest, Portland, the 'Campaign for Prosperity' volunteers are working hard to convince that yes, with education, you can.
Paul's Cozy Corner is more a quiet, quaint bar than rum bar,
surrounded by a lush and well-kept garden. It is well off the beaten track, and doubtless idyllic for any tourist who can find it. It is a world away from a crowded National Arena PNP conference time but waiting inside, calculated Dr. Rose, were 14 of the precious, approximately 3,500 delegates whose votes Omar needs in order to be party president.
The rival teams of Peter Phillips, Portia Simpson Miller and Karl Blythe have already visited to talk to people like Ashman Cooke, chairman of Sherwood Forest United. Mr. Cooke and the group's other
delegate Joel Vassel will have to cast their votes according to the wishes of the group's 20 members. And according to him, the attention from the candidates is unprecedented.
"In the previous campaign (P.J. Patterson against Portia Simpson Miller in 1992) they didn't reach out as far, especially to the groups. But now we are seeing them almost every day, which is good," said Mr. Cooke.
The first half of the presentation by the campaign team is standard political fare why the audience should vote for the candidate, their vision and of course, the member of the press is offered a free drink (The Sunday Gleaner chose Ting, thank you). Except that nobody else appears to get one, for that is not the Omar way.
"No handouts," explains Dr. Rose of her husband's style which she acknowledges has alienated some in South St. Andrew, perhaps more accustomed to traditional political patronage. Instead, the campaign refers to the financial assistance he has given the education of promising youngsters. Dr. Rose herself was part of a group to help train and find employment for young single mothers in the constituency.
And so in the second half of the presentation, the message turns to self-sufficiency: convincing the audience how they can be world class. Besides Dr. Rose's professional expertise, also on hand is Omar's sister Beverly McKenzie, a retired guidance counsellor turned education consultant.
The audience does get hand-outs, albeit leaflets, explaining how to apply for government programmers such as PATH or HEART the campaign calls these 'Empowerment Sessions'.
"Promises," one audience member sniggered quietly in response.
At the very least they are a do-it-yourself way to become 'world class'. What Dr. Rose calls "a novel way of campaigning", was conceived in December when the campaign, thought to be on the rocks by some, held a retreat in Denbigh, Clarendon.
POOR REPRESENTATION
"When we had travelled the island and spoke to delegates we were concerned about the helplessness they felt," she said. A frequent grouse of the party faithful was poor representation and a second problem was their frustration or an apparent lack of awareness about how to access government programmes to aid personal and community development.
"Some maybe wanted to reopen their little shop, get back into chicken farming, get back into selling. Maybe these are not major things but they don't know where to go," she explained.
And so, according to Dr. Rose, the campaign has "tried to respond to every single soul," often with the help of appropriate professionals guiding these persons.
And the volunteering of such professionals is another side of the campaign in which she believes the campaign has broken ground. The message, she says, has caught on with the middle class and upper classes, such as bankers and doctors, who she reasoned, previously stood on the sidelines but see something new in the message.
But the questions do remain for Omar and the answers will need to be given. The most vocal complainant in the audience was a small farmer who said she was unable to sell her yams at a good price and wanted help in marketing her produce. Pressures of the Finance Ministry aside, for one more delegate and the real top job, Omar may well first need to fix the Portland yam market.
