Ian Boyne, Contributor

The fact that the Trafigura issue has hurt the People's National Party (PNP) and has finally caused the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to gain some traction proves that moral outrage is a significant factor in the political hustings.

The pragmatists and myopic secularists who control political parties and their strategising usually downplay moral issues and only appeal to them conveniently. To these persons, it is the narrow economic and social issues which really concern people - unemploy-ment, the cost of living, medical care, crime and so on - just issues of economic and social well-being. In fact, there were many persons like Wilmot Perkins who were puzzled as to why the PNP was still ahead in the polls when it was clear to them that the PNP was doing a disastrous job of managing the economy.

PNP still favoured

Perkins and others were bewildered that after 17 years of PNP rule, polls were showing people still favouring the party when from their (Perkins' and others) reading of things, everything was falling apart and the country had descended into economic and social chaos. To hear Wilmot Perkins, Basil Buck and Audley Shaw talk, you would think that the PNP's "gross mismanagement of the economy" and "fiscal recklessness" would have long translated into huge gains for the JLP.

Yet, despite the obvious fact that many people are feeling the economic pressure - this is no JLP propaganda - and that crime is intolerably high, it was only after the Trafigura affair that the JLP has been making any inroads in the polls. This is significant and shows the power of the moral issues.

The parties have underestimated the power of moral outrage, though to his everlasting political credit, Audley Shaw has never. Audley has always understood the power of the corruption card and has used it most deftly. Audley has always understood that the economic and social issues alone are not sufficient to pull people to the JLP. Painting the PNP as "the most corrupt administration ever" is a more effective propaganda line than the one about being the most economically reckless Government in our history.

Indeed, Bruce Golding's own appeal as leader of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) owed much to his playing the moral card. Aside from his concentration on constitutional reform, Bruce also spoke with moral passion and indignation and was able to link the call for constitutional reform with issues of public morality.

Systems need changing

Bruce showed convincingly, in my view, that systems needed changing and that sanctions needed to be enshrined which would motivate politicians and public servants to improve their ethical conduct. His inveighing against "dutty politics" had the moral ring and the sense of moral outrage which is very effective in marketing. (Associate Professor of Psychology Jonathan Haidt illustrates this in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern truth in Ancient Wisdom).

Tuesday's headline in the Jamaica Observer blared, "JLP Looking Better than PNP After Trafigura", stating that, "More Jamaicans say they now have less confidence in the ruling People's National Party compared with those who feel the same way about the Opposition Jamaica labour Party because of the highly controversial Trafigura affair, the latest Stone Poll has shown". But, importantly, too, the Stone Poll showed that the Tafigura issue has caused more Jamaicans to mistrust both parties.

Jamaicans want character

So the moral issue and the issue of character are very real to Jamaicans. Jamaicans want more than just bread and circus. They want character. And this is a market to which the parties are not deliberately playing.

Rhetorically, the Prime Minister has pitched her leadership firmly in the context of Christian values. She now needs to get the entire party to think beyond narrow pragmatism and utilitarianism. The PNP used to be an ideological party. It no longer is, regrettably. It is merely a party promising to do a better job than the JLP of delivering the economic goods. That is not good enough.

Bruce Golding needs to get his traditionally non-ideological, purely utilitarian party into a mould where it has an articulated philosophy, undergirded by a moral vision. Bruce has both the capacity and inclination to do so, but the narrow pragmatists around him are mildly scolding him for being "too middle class" and too "philosophical" (a very bad word in their political dictionary). They are constantly reminding him that people are interested in the raw economic, survival issues, not in issues of constitutional and political reform.

Philosophy can't deliver jobs and cut the debt, they are telling him in effect. Some JLP politicians have their favourite Golding joke where he would be out in the bush somewhere talking about constitutional reform and boring country people to death. That would never happen to Pearnel or Audley. They have mastered political rhetoric. I regard Pearnel and Audley as two of the absolute masters of political communication. Their platform presence and delivery are formidable.

A moral vision

But Jamaica needs more than that (though that is important, mark you). Bruce Golding needs to articulate a moral vision. It is not enough to come up with a set of economic and social programmes and projects.We have seen with various scandals what the lack of integrity and morality can do with even good projects and programmes.

We need people of integrity, people of high moral character. They don't have to be in the church, for secularists can also have a firm moral grounding. (One of the finest philosophical treatises I have read on ethics is by the atheist Tara Smith in her book Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality.)

One of the finest papers ever written by a Jamaican social scientist is the late Professor Carl Stone's Values Norms and personality development in Jamaica. This, along with Don Robotham's GraceKennedy Foundation lecture on voluntarism, should be required reading for everyone seeking political office in Jamaica. They are hard to exceed in depth of analytical rigour and moral perspicacity.

In Stone's paper, done in 1992 shortly before his death, he underlined the importance of values in national development: "In our day to day analysis of social behaviour, political behaviour and economic behaviour, we make judgments about and assess the nature of the values and norms operating in a society, yet we rarely seek to focus attention in Caribbean social science theory and research on the realm of values, norms and personality traits."

In other words, what kinds of persons are our societies reproducing and what about the quality of their moral lives? Corruption and immorality can endanger accumulated wealth, drive away investment and act as a disincentive to enterprise, innovation and creativity. You can have the best systems in the world, but if they are run by unethical people - especially if they are bright - they can find ingenious ways of beating the system.

Scandals and corruption

I say we should take this opportunity where people are concerned about scandals and corruption to focus on some larger issues. Some might be only interested in throwing out the PNP and replacing them with the JLP. They can fight that battle. My concern is with the majority of non-tribalists who want to see a better, more ethical Jamaica.

How we can build that kind of Jamaica? What is the character of the men and women seeking election in both the JLP and the PNP? Does that matter? Is that an irrelevant, mushy issue? Should we just focus on economics and social issues and ignore "these sentimental religious issues"?

Even an agnostic and ardent anti-churchman like Mark Wignall is pretty incensed over moral issues and corruption these days! There is no more street-smart and down-to-earth columnist in this country than Mark Wignall. No one has his ears more to the ground. And even he would join with me as a moral absolutist in saying that the ethical issues have to be put on the agenda. If Trafigura has given us that gift, then let us accept it.

Decline of respectability

Mark has to reckon with this profound statement of his late brother-in-law Professor Carl Stone, one of the most brilliant intellectuals the Caribbean has ever produced: "The dominance of money as the single most important currency of influence, power and status, and the decline of respectability as a status-defining factor have promoted increased and rampant corruption both in Government and in the private sector corporate world." Stone then asked, "Can democracy be built on a weak authority system in virtually all domains of social space?" The politicians are not clearly and consistently articulating these issues, swept away as they are by narrow economistic concerns.

Stone said, "The challenge facing Jamaica is to develop an agenda of solutions to these contradictions and development roadblocks." But our politicians' minds are not there. Their minds are on narrow economistic concerns, and yet if the two parties are reading the polls clearly, they would see it was not the economic and social issues which boosted the JLP's poll ratings - finally - but an issue of ethics and morality, namely Trafigura.

The people are saying morality matters. But are the politicians really listening?

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.