Martin Henry

Edward Seaga's last Sunday Gleaner column confirms - and frightens. I find its sub-text, "The voter/citizen as simpleton", highly offensive.

The general drift of Mr. Seaga's view is that it is the masses of simpletons who determine election victories and defeats. And since the people are incapable of sophisticated political understanding only simplistic messages can be delivered to them as entertaining sloganeering from the political platform. The political platform he regards "as the best means of communication to the general public" in this age of mass media. In countries where the society has a literate tradition, there is better understanding of the main issues which affect the country, he says, but Jamaica is not a literary society; it is an oral one, implying incapacity to deal with complex issues.

Class Snobbery

Furthermore people who frown on what they consider a condescending and denigrating form of political communication are guilty of class snobbery and ignorant of the power of popular culture, as if there is any irreconcilable chasm between the oral discussion of serious and complex issues and using the popular culture in public communication.

I am from the black, rural, barefooted under class of Jamaican society. I have always found large numbers of my class of origin to be thoughtful and to be capable of discussing issues and ideas and in fact want to do so and can be led to do so. Mr. Seaga's non-political sociological experience should confirm that. If anything, people have been diminished by the low 'chi chi man' politics, not the other way round.

One of the great burdens of black people is to overcome the quashee syndrome. Young Orlando Patterson did an excellent analysis of quashee in his Ph.D. thesis which was published as "The Sociology of Slavery".

What is frightening about the Seaga piece with its forthright analysis of the cheap and denigrating political communication which has characterised the political platform on all sides from year zero to now is its clear grasp of the implications. Understanding of the main issues, he says, "is a necessity if true democracy, not a fictitious version, is to prevail. If the people are ignorant of issues, they can easily be duped into misplacing their support by entertaining and enticing them into 'feel good' situations which have a strong short-term impact. And from a former party leader and Prime Minister, the longest serving MP and the creator of the first and great Independence Five Year Development Plan, 1963-1968, "Perhaps this is a good reason for keeping the electorate ignorant."

An educated, politically engaged but independent of the government middle class is necessary for successful democracy anywhere. Government has poured vast resources into education. The data is showing that CARICOM countries including Jamaica, albeit at the bottom, are spending comparatively more as a proportion of their GDP on education than most other places in the world.

We would have hoped that this investment would have helped to build a sturdy, democratic political system here where ideas and issues and informed public discussions, not circuses, would be central to political campaigns. Instead we are now advised by a 50-year veteran that "those who are seeking a more straightforward issue-oriented electoral system, must encourage the development of a more successful education system capable of dealing with issues. Otherwise the country will continue to operate on a fiction of democracy." A large number of people of all social groupings are turned off from politics, not just because of its corruption and tribal violence but also on account of its banality.

Education System

It does not require an educator and communicator, as I have used the education system to become from the least of the 'have nots', to understand that deep issues can be simply and entertainingly communicated quite effectively. Mr. Seaga's either/or stand-off is contrived and fictitious.

The one and only time that Edward Seaga led his party to victory in a contested general election was when the critical issues at stake were starkly clear and voters/citizens, understanding those issues and their implications, overwhelmingly took a stand. Despite his participation in pandering to the quashee in Jamaicans, this country, including even Michael Manley, owes Eddie a debt of gratitude for clarifying and communicating those crossroads issues in 1980 and winning the vote which turned back a looming disaster.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist.