Danger! Unwillingness to lose
SAID the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ): “With all the ballots counted, the result is that the JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] won the election for control of the local authorities with seven of the local authorities and the PNP [People’s National Party] won six of the local authorities inclusive of the Portmore Municipality.”
In spite of this crystal clear declaration by the duly constituted body responsible for the overall administration and management of elections in this country, several high-ranking officials in the leadership of the PNP, and some well-credentialled confederates, continue to delude themselves — and foment public mischief — by deliberately stroking the blatant falsehood that the PNP won our 17th local government election held 13 days ago. This is a great harbinger.
Why are they doing this awful thing? The answer is found in this public statement by PNP Chairman Emeritus Robert Pickersgill. He said: “We believe that it is best for the PNP to form the Government; therefore, anything that will lead or cause us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.”
ONLY TOO OBVIOUS SIGNS
Up to the time of writing, Mark Golding, the Opposition leader and president of the PNP, had not conceded. Golding, buoyed maybe by certain injudicious media projections on the night of the count, jumped the gun and started a premature celebratory jig at 89 Old Hope Road. It did not last long. When it became obvious — maybe except to those who suffer with political cataracts — that the PNP did not in fact win, one journalist asked Golding if he was going to concede?
“I am conceding nothing,” said Golding. His refusal to do the right thing is a national alert. It should make the antennae of all well-thinking Jamaicans stand up.
I warned in previous The Agenda pieces that the PNP was headed in a direction which was antithetical to our rich democratic norms. As recent as January 28, 2024, for example, I sounded an alarm in a column entitled ‘We must guard our democracy’. I made reference to egregious and what I believe to be dangerous comments by Manchester North Western Member of Parliament (MP) Mikael Phillips, who said, among other things: “Each and every one of you from Westmoreland made a mistake in 2020.” (Nationwide News Network, January 6, 2024). Obvious here maybe except to those who are deliberately blind is Phillips’ frightening castigation of the people of Westmoreland for electing three JLP candidates to Parliament at the last general election in 2020.
Recall I commented inter alia on this escalation of anti-democratic utterances emanating from Norman Manley’s party. “Doubtless some are going to say, ‘This is just idle jiving on the political hustings.’ I disagree.
“Phillips’ statement is no laughing matter. Why? It is the democratic right of the people of Westmoreland to elect who they want to manage their affairs in Parliament. Phillips is a vice-president of the PNP; he is a legislator and spokesperson on transport, and the reliable Black-bellied Plovers, Bananaquits, and John Chewits tweet that he harbours ambitions to become president of the PNP, and prime minister. I don’t believe Phillips’ questioning the scared and democratic right of electors to choose their political representatives resembles prime ministerial fabric.”
‘TEK SLEEP AND MARK DEATH’
In the mentioned piece I made reference to two works by Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Given Golding’s refusal to concede, I feel it is important to revisit sections of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s celebrated book Tyranny of the Minority: How American Democracy Came to the Breaking Point. In this renowned work they reiterated these settled social science metrics: “Parties which are committed to democracy must do three things: First of all they must unambiguously accept the result of elections were they to lose. Second, must unambiguously reject the use of violence. And third, must break completely from anti-democratic extremists.”
For clarity, professors Levitsky and Ziblatt were quoting from the work of Juan José Linz, a German-born, acclaimed sociologist and political scientist who produced several seminal works in comparative politics. In their elaboration of Linz’s metrics, Levitsky and Ziblatt posit that a key warning sign of democratic disintegration is the enfeebling of venerated social and political norms which produce mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.
When those norms dwindle and/or degenerate, people begin to see their rivals not as legitimate opponents, but as dangerous threats — enemies. It then becomes easier for actors to justify authoritarian measures and democracy becomes harder to sustain, Levitsky and Ziblatt submit.
The professors further put forward that the collapse of democracies seldom start with violent street demonstrations and coups. That is usually the end-stage manifestations of serious deterioration they propound. Often, instead, subtle and gradual chipping away at the pillars of time-honoured political traditions and institutions are the geneses of the demise of democracies.
I believe Golding’s refusal to concede is part of that chipping away process. It is a strategy directly from the playbook of Donald J Trump, former American president.
We must ‘tek sleep and mark death’. Rural folks maintain and I agree, “A
nuh the same day leaf fall from tree it rotten.” Well-thinking and discerning folks, I maintain, have a duty to warn about threats to our still developing democracy.
But there is something else, which I believe is equally frightening as Golding’s refusal to concede: That is the overt support which he has got from certain lettered individuals in our society. It is one thing for the ‘man in the street’, the so-called unlettered citizen, to peddle blatant misinformation, it is quite another for well-schooled people, some trained at some of the best institutes of learning in the world, to foster wholesale deception, overt obfuscations, and deplorable double speak. Those of us who know better must speak out and speak up when disinformation and misinformation are retailed and wholesaled by individuals who have a duty to be loyal to facts. French Philosopher Julien Benda in his famed book The Treason of the Intellectuals castigates learned people who reject facts on the altar of commercialism and careerism. He is right. Benda in his 1920s classic noted, among other things: “The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators.” Citizen leaders have a duty to facts.
Those who are hostile to facts are not friends of democracy. And those who refuse to accept defeat and or spew sour grapes when a tried, tested, and proven electoral process does its work impartially are not friends of democracy either.
Levitsky and Ziblatt, in the mentioned book, note that: “Democracy requires that parties know how to lose. When a major political party cannot accept defeat, democracy is in trouble.”
We who are discerning must not sit idly by and watch a few who suffer with “vaulting ambition” (read Shakespeare’s Macbeth) to destroy our world-class electoral system.
I previously said here that the electoral system which we have today is the result of some 45 years of blood, sweat, and tears by outstanding Jamaicans such as Professor Gladstone E. Mills, (now deceased), the first chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC) and former chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), Professor Errol Miller, former prime ministers Edward Seaga and Michael Manley and hundreds of patriotic Jamaicans who expended tremendous amounts of personal time and energy to ensure that our electoral process, which is today regarded as one of the finest in the world, was fit for purpose.
MORE THAN SOUR GRAPES
Attacks on the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) by individuals whose political DNA are known except maybe to those who live under a rock are unwarranted, do not augur well for our democracy and are quite frankly disgusting and disgraceful.
Then there are those who have years of experience with the electoral system of Jamaica who are now seemingly throwing cold water on the work and worth of the globally respected EOJ.
Consider this: CVM Anchor, Mach 1, 2024: “Meanwhile in another turn of events, the Opposition leader is calling for changes in the Electoral Office of Jamaica following its handling of the local government elections results this week. Mark Golding insists the people’s confidence in the institution is dwindling.”
Mark Golding: “We have concerns with the length of time this has taken. We have concerns on the way they presented the data which we don’t think is a balance and fair way to have presented it, as well. It has led to this misrepresentation to the public that the JLP won the election, which is flawed and false.”
Consider this too: ‘Dr Campbell claims PNP’S ‘win’ at the local polls can’t be refuted.’ (Nationwide News Network, March 4, 2024)
Golding was the minister of justice in the Portia Simpson Miller-led Administration from 2011 to 2016, and Dr Campbell was a former legislator, and is at present a commissioner on the ECJ.
Golding and Campbell have advanced and intimate knowledge of the operations of the EOJ and ECJ. Why are they only now coming out to criticise the processes used in deciding who wins a local election?
They lost the election and now, like sore losers, are crying foul. Their actions are grim harbingers.
THE WAY FORWARD
Facts are our best friend in this Information Age. Circumventers of facts are not friends of Jamaica’s growth and development.
Fortunately, the days when only a privileged set had access to critical information are over. Thousands of especially ordinary Jamaicans can now factcheck the pronouncements of anyone. I believe many among us did not get that memo. And some who did do not understand its content. Let me help them.
There is a critical mass of Jamaicans who will not buy into fluff, fake news, obfuscations, and deflections. We are insisting that those who seek especially the highest political office in this land present to us fully-costed policies and programmes with practical timelines attached. These programmes cannot and must not be hastily hatched and thrown at us 24 hours and 48 hours before an election, either. Those who believe inveighing against respected intuitions like the EOJ will win political brownie points, and those who believe tacit and or overt support for ghosts of the past which damaged us is the way forward had better forget it.
In the 70s some tried to turn this country into something which Jamaicans innately detest. I get the impression, based on the public utterances of some, that if they were to get their hands on especially State power we would likely head back into that awful direction. They must be democratically resisted. They did not achieve their backward objectives in the 70s; God alone knows why they think they can do so today.
Levitsky and Ziblatt in the mentioned book note that: “Political scientists have discovered two seemingly sort of rock solid facts about democracies. First, rich democracies never die. A second seemingly rock solid fact about democracies is that old democracies never die. No democracy over the age of 50 has ever broken down.”
Jamaica will celebrate 62 years of Independence this year. We are a successful democracy. This is an accepted fact, maybe except to those who are strangers to facts.
“Democracy dies in darkness,” is the slogan of the globally respected The Washington Post. All of us who treasure democracy must shine a bright light on those whose motives are at a minimum anti-democratic and anti-jamaican.
Jamaica should not, and cannot backslide into the era of an unusable past. Were we to make that dreadful error again, we would become permanent castaways, socially, politically, and economically.
The world is embracing new technologies at a rapid pace. Countries which get sucked in by low-voltage leadership will pay an awful price. I believe Jamaica will only continue to shine brightly by staying on the present forward trajectory.