Ian Boyne, Contributor

Calling the elections at a time when people's frustration levels over back-to-school expenses are highest and when Bruce Golding's inducement of free tuition is most tantalising might be tricky for the Prime Minister. She might be obsessed with seven, but has Prophet Phinn given her a six for a nine?

A strong circumstantial case can be made for the Prime Minister's attaching some importance to the number seven. But rooting that necessarily in occultism and superstition is either a clever propagandistic overstretch, gross ignorance of theological matters or prejudice against religious thinking.

Anyone acquainted with comparative religion or religious studies will know that in both Judaism and Christianity - especially the former - much significance is attached to numbers. Indeed, there are some Rabbinic scholars who claim to have uncovered the true, 'hidden' meanings of the mysteries of the Torah simply be decoding the numbers of the Hebrew alphabet. In Scripture seven is the number of completion or perfection.

According to the Bible - not occultic writings or 'balm yard' sayings - God created the world in seven days and marked off the seventh day as special. That is why over 12 million Seventh-day Adventists around the world, along with other seventh-day Sabbatarians, are distinguished by their observance of the seventh day every single week. They put some significance to seven because they claim God did so first in the first week of creation.

In addition, God established seven annual festivals. Every seventh year in theocratic Israel the land rested, and every 49th year - seven times seven - a jubilee was proclaimed for the 50th year. In that 50th year slaves were freed and the poor received land. (Incidentally, though none of the predominantly secularist opinion leaders in the media has pointed this out, it is exactly 50 days between the time of the announcement of the elections and its holding on August 27! So they can add this to their litany).

Most prominent number

The walls of Jericho fell after Joshua and the army of Israelites marched around it for seven days. In the book of Revelation, which biblical scholars now know are filled with Old Testament allusions and references (See Professor Beale's monumental commentary on the book), the number seven is the most prominent: We read of the seven churches, the seven golden lamp stands, the seven angels, the seven stars, the seven trumpets, the seven last plagues, the seven seals, the seven spirits of God.

I don't expect Cliff Hughes, Carol Narcisse, Emily Crooks, Wilmot Perkins, Anthony Abrahams, Mark Wignall and the other secularists who are part of the media opinion elite in Jamaica to know this, but Hyacinth Bennett and Betty Ann Blaine should have some familiarity with these matters. To say that attaching any significance to numbers is itself numerology is to display gross ignorance as to what numerology is.

There are some Christians - a minority - who are numerologists and who take that kind of hermeneutical approach to the Bible, but the vast majority of Christians don't and yet they understand that the Bible does attach significance to numbers such as 7, 8 and 12. (For example, it is not coincidental that there were twelve chosen tribes of Israel, twelve chosen disciples, and that the New Jerusalem according to Revelation 21 has twelve gates, twelve angels, with the wall of the city having twelve foundations and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles; while on the twelve gates are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel).

Most Christians have no problem in seeing the clear, unequivocal fact that the Bible does put symbolic significance on some numbers. Now, you can say that putting any significance to numbers is just total nonsense, madness and evidence of religious idiocy. That comes to my other point about the prejudice against religious thought or the anti-religious position.

But let those people make themselves clear. I have no problem with the position of Mark Wignall, for Mark is honest and clear about his rejection of the Bible. Mark does not believe in God so any appeal to the Bible is total foolishness to him.

But those Christians, like Hyacinth Bennett, who necessarily equate the Prime Minister's attaching any significance to the number seven with being rank occultism and superstition, are puzzling to me, outside of political bias.

Common belief

It is a fact that occultists, New Agers and assorted metaphysicians attach significance to numbers, including seven. But it is elementary in philosophy and the social sciences that correlation is not the same as causation. And the fact that two religious or philosophical systems share a common belief does not mean that they arose from the same source.

This is why I continue to say that journalists should be trained in philosophical analysis and should be exposed to philosophy courses, for it is essential to our work. It is not enough to know politics and economics. In fact, one of the reasons we are so poor in our political and economic analysis is that we generally lack basic philosophical exposure.

If the political propagandists want to scream about the Prime Minister's being hostage to demonic, occultic forces, let them do their partisan work - now that they don't have the scare of 'godless communism' to use, they have to draw for another bogeyman, and in a fundamentalist country talking about the occult and superstition will drive enough fear into voters!

But those who want to be taken seriously as analysts must exercise intellectual caution.

If I were conspiracy-minded, I would now begin to think that the media really have it in for the Prime Minister. Follow me closely. For weeks the media have been complaining that the Prime Minister has just been tracing, cussing off everybody on the political platform and whining about bad treatment from the media. Some say her behaviour on the platform has been unladylike and not befitting her high office.

I myself have criticised the Prime Minister for criticising the media. I urged her in my column last week to concentrate on issues rather than tracing off anyone. So we all have been saying she must dealwith issues, speak respectfully about the Leader of the Opposition and leave the media alone.

I received so many emails last week commending me for the stern warning to the Prime Minister, with some hoping that the PM's handlers would read the column. (Incidentally, my pet name is Shaggy and I can truthfully say of her speech last weekend, "it wasn't me"!)

The PNP party president delivered last Sunday before her massive crowd a dignified, measured, temperate, issues-oriented speech which has been almost totally ignored by the media, except to say that it was boring, lost the crowd and uncharismatically read. Now, Portia can't win. If she ranted and dissed the Opposition Leader, cussed off the JLP and engaged in histrionics, the crowd would have given her many forwards and "Pram Pram!" She would have held their attention.

Instead, she took the risk to bore them while speaking to the captive media audience, and what did she get from the same media which had been calling on her all along to deal with issues? An obsession with the number seven and all the horrors of calling the election so late - though she is constitutionally three months earlier than the due date!

What we have had all week is a discussion over trivia and a marginalising of her substantive presentation. The PNP party president kicked off the election campaign with a sober, issues-oriented speech in which she focused on her party's record of performance, putting that in the public square for discussion, and what we had instead is a focus all week on numerology; with the substance of the one-hour presentation totally ignored. This is media selectivity and framing in operation.

Focus on issues

Rather than attacking Bruce Golding personally, whom she respectfully referred to as the Leader of the Opposition, she asked us to do an important thing: She invited our empirical analysis by saying we should examine her record as Minister of Government with his as minister under the JLP. This is the kind of thing we want to see on the platform- a focus on issues, on performance, a call to rationally examine evidence. That is what Portia gave us on Sunday night, and we in the media have not even had the courtesy to acknowledge it.

But had she attacked the media or the JLP, there would certainly be attention to the speech. Since there was nothing in the speech to attack, the focus shifted to speculation as to what lay behind the selection of the date. My advice to her is, keep sticking with the issues. Let the media focus on peripherals if they want to. To Portia I say, it is better to be boring than ballistic!

Now, Carol Narcisse, one of the finest minds in media today, has raised an excellent point in her characteristically incisive way. She says there is a larger issue with the PM's attachment to the number seven. That is, the influence of her private religious beliefs on her public responsibilities. Narcisse is concerned that her religious ideology is encroaching dangerously on the public square, and with an atrocious history of religious fundamentalism, especially when combined with political power, there is real cause for fear. I understand her sentiments as well as her secularist bias.

But there is no Archimedean point. There is no View From Nowhere. All of us act out of subjective beliefs. Some prime ministers call elections according to strategic considerations - money, poll numbers, and party readiness. Portia might be calling it according to spiritual considerations (the conflation of sevens). As to which is better is a deeply epistemological issue and not a common-sense one, as is naively assumed. The very notion of 'common sense' is ideological and not philosophically neutral.

Let us have a discussion then on the role of religion in political life. But while the PM has acted constitutionally and legally, let us cut the propaganda and settle down to discussing the issues of the election.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.