Dawn Ritch, Columnist

The politics of the country at the moment is very hard to read. All the recent, published opinion polls from three different polling organisations show the two major political parties in a statistical dead heat.

Characteristic of the polls is a considerable decline in Mrs. Portia Simpson Miller's popularity, a decline in the standing of her People's National Party (PNP), and a marginal increase in the popularity of Opposition Leader Bruce Golding and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). These shifts, taken as a whole, have accounted for the statistical dead heat of the two parties.

Unchanged

The leadership succession in the PNP, which concluded in February, last year, was preceded by nearly two years of islandwide campaigning. It was overlong, raucous and acrimonious. Mrs. Simpson Miller as Prime Minister is reaping the bitter fruit. All the more so when, try as they might, people cannot discern anything in the current hierarchy of the PNP nor the Cabinet of the country which gives them the faintest encouragement as to what her team could look like.

Indeed, she presides over an unchanged Patterson Cabinet and an unchanged PNP hierarchy. People are understandably distressed at the sight. The Prime Minister, there by dint of an internal party conference, maintains that she must seek her own electoral mandate from the people of the country. Many were, therefore, disappointed when shedidn't go straight to a general election right after she won the internal contest for the presidency of the PNP.

According to a newspaper report at the time, it was her outgoing predecessor who had to prevail upon the PNP Members of Parliament to agree that she commanded their majority support. Otherwise, she would never have become Prime Minister, and Dr. Peter Phillips would have been sworn in at King's House instead.

The most important public she has had to win, since that inauguration, is, therefore, the hierarchy of her own political party. Without it she'll have no party with which to contest the next general election. Her campaign colour of yellow was later described as 'an outreach' colour. But in truth, it was a 'survive' colour, and she squeaked to victory. This outcome appalled both the hierarchy of the PNP and the establishment of the country, neither of which had been remotely expecting it.

There are signs that they still haven't got over it. Dr. Phillips is no longer ebullient either as Speaker of the House or Minister of Security. He has become listless. Dr. Omar Davies, Finance Minister, is off the front pages and can't think of what to say. And the media have been reduced to talking about her doodles, foreign travel expenses, her personal credit card, and calling upon her to do the things she's done already, or has set in train, or were set in train by her predecessor.

Sport portfolio

In the latter respect, I refer only and specifically to Cricket World Cup, the third-largest sporting event in the world. Mrs. Simpson Miller kept the sport portfolio from the time she was Minister of Labour, through Tourism, Local Government and still keeps it today. That's about 17 years, so it is hard to think she had nothing to do with the siting of that event in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

But let's assume that she didn't and it was all the work of P. J. Patterson. It would explain his long reluctance to leave the national scene.

This event has been used as an excuse to re-fit the island. Our mainthoroughfares have been repaved and sidewalks built. Our rolling stock of fire engines, garbage trucks, ambulances, protocol cars and buses has been replenished. Our hospitals are receiving the finest medical equipment. Ah yes, and let's not forget the thorough-going garbage clean-up under way by government agencies and 10,000 Christians. These are really the most indescribable benefits, even if we had to virtually build two stadiums to get them. I, who, care nothing for sports, suddenly like them. That is a conversion of no mean order.

No wonder Patterson wanted anybody but Mrs. Simpson Miller to win the presidency of the PNP. It was supposed to be Dr. Phillips originally. Then he lost traction. Next it was supposed to be Dr. Omar Davies, but he failed to gain any traction at all, regardless of how interminably the internal contest was delayed. All of them ended up running anyway, including Dr. Karl Blythe, and she still won.

It has begun to occur to me that World Cup Cricket here might actually become the success I thought it would never be. If it is, it will be the only thing Patterson ever did that didn't collapse into a welter of corruption, criticism and acrimony.

Many people believe that such a happy outcome might give Mrs. Simpson Miller and the PNP a bounce in the opinion polls. I could be wrong of course, but I don't think so. In Jamaica no good deed goes unpunished.

There is unlikely to be any increased favourable opinion of either the Prime Minister or her party because of World Cup Cricket. Infrastructure is not the same thing as cellular phones and used motor cars. It is public, and not personal. So, I hope she's not counting on cricket to give her a window of opportunity to burst through the finish line.

These things that are now being done through cricket for motorists, pedestrians, hospitals, patients and taxpayers ought to have been done long ago. Only a mind like Patterson's could think we should be grateful for them, and that it would give an electoral bounce to any successor he cared to foist upon us.

It mightn't even give a bounce to the one he didn't want, but whom the grass roots elected, because until she wins her own mandate, she has no choice but to continue his legacy. This is a legacy she could have well done without.

The only thing on her side is therefore not her own party, but the fact that she is tainted by neither corruption nor failure. This is her most valuable asset, and why she continues to be miles ahead as the most trusted politician in the country.

PART OF THE landscape

The Opposition Jamaica Labour Party will need a big scandal about her prime ministerial administration or her former portfolios in order to succeed to office. It will take something really meaningful to change public perception of Mrs. Simpson Miller. A simple 'On the one hand' and 'On the other hand' won't do it. Nobody will care.

The members of the People's National Party themselves will have to shake off their paralysis, and get into the field. That is of course, unless they're really all too tired and washed up, and wish to go into opposition.

Much as the country may approve of the Prime Minister, people are not inspired either by her Cabinet or her party. Bruce Golding is good at the task of being Opposition leader, I suppose, but the JLP under his leadership has become just an empty suit maintained at somebody else's expense.

The two major political parties have merely become a part of the landscape, and easily ignored. I can't imagine how either of them is going to be able to convert that into fervour at a general election.