The more things change.
Jamaica’s fourth general election, held on July 28, 1959, saw the incumbent People’s National Party (PNP) holding onto power, winning 29 of the 45 seats in the House of Representatives.
The results were hotly contested by the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which charged that there were serious election-day irregularities, particularly the practice of bogus voting through impersonation of legitimate voters, bribery of voters and even cases of the names of deceased persons being used to vote.
As a consequence, when Parliament convened for official business on Tuesday, September 1 inside Headquarters House, Norman Washington Manley, president of the PNP and premier, moved a two-part resolution, calling on the House to record its confidence in the newly-elected government; and establishing a five-member House Committee to review the conduct of the election.
The committee’s purpose, he proposed, was “to investigate the said matters and to consider how the Representation of the People Law may be amended to ensure that impersonation may be eliminated or minimised in future elections and how other malpractices may be avoided.”
While dismissing rumours that “thousands of votes were cast in names of dead persons. and persons no longer present in Jamaica, Manley conceded that “some false votes were polled, and probably a fairly substantial number”.
That, he contended, had been going on from the outset of Universal Adult Suffrage with the first election in 1944.
The Parliamentary Committee, he argued, could adopt procedures “which will give them with considerable accuracy the extent to which false voting prevailed in the last election”.
But the Opposition would have none of it, demanding instead that a commission of inquiry be established to look into the allegations.
Donald Sangster, deputy leader of the JLP, characterising the motion as double-barrelled, ridiculed the idea of the same motion calling for a vote of confidence in the Government, which had come to office by means of an election, “which the Government itself admits needs investigating and. rectifying”.
Sangster, in furtherance of his argument for a judicial commission of inquiry, cited a case in which it was alleged that a letter was written on behalf of an employee of the PNP’s headquarters on South Camp Road, seeking the issuance to him of a voting card, which read, in part:
“Dear Stephenson,
This gentleman,. is willing to vote but his name is not listed. Could you do anything for him, also any other that can be spared?…”
Manley had his own story of alleged JLP malpractice to counter that of the Opposition: “It is not accident that 91 voters’ cards were found in an office in charge of a member of the Jamaica Labour Party in a constituency in St Andrew where there were chemicals and active, organised process of false voting going on,” he said.
Tales aplenty of dead people voting were also swapped during the debate.
Manley even went so far as to tally the number of dead votes and measure their possible impact on the election.
Giving a breakdown of voters from the grave, he said “the total average number of dead persons, or absent persons in Kingston is under 700 per constituency. The total combined dead and absent on the list for the country constituencies is as small as 150 and as large as 550. The consequence of that is this: if every single doubtful vote, absent vote had been polled in favour of the Labour Party they would have lost the election exactly the same!”
This prompted Labour Party leader, Alexander Bustamante, to ask him whether there was any ghost following him.
Florizel Glasspole, PNP member for East Kingston, accused the Opposition of merely seeking to tarnish the PNP’s victory because they could not accept that they had lost an election which they had been so confident of winning.
And on an allied matter, Glasspole, who was responsible for electoral matters, made a rather curious assertion, pouring scorn on a proposal that “photographs should be taken of every voter in Jamaica for the mere purpose of voting”.
Waxing warm on the subject, he thundered: “Mr Speaker, … I will never, never agree that every voter in Jamaica should be photographed for the mere purpose of identification at an election, because I am not prepared to stamp my countrymen as second class people in the eyes of the world by photographing them for elections!”
In another eerily familiar theme, Glasspole, in noting that the JLP wanted to bring in a British judge to be chairman of the commission proposed by that party, accused the Opposition of having “no confidence whatever in our own Jamaican-born judges!”
Accusations aplenty of bogus voting were generously swapped across the floor during the debate, with Sangster even suggesting that a dog bearing the name Glasspole was on the voters’ list, to which Glasspole shot back: “No, Bustamante!” This evoked even more laughter.
Nor was the language always genteel. In one instance, Opposition member Robert Lightbourne made reference to figures on bogus voting, at which point Government member A G S Coombs asked: “Where you get those figures? From Paris Street?”
Bustamante jumped in at that point: “Shut your mouth! You would get yours from the rum shop!”
On the substantive point, Lightbourne, in pressing the Opposition’s demand for a commission of inquiry, called on the Government to respond to public opinion, which he argued, was the social conscience of the country.
But Premier Manley would not be moved, asserting that “under no circumstances” would he set up “any form of inquiry at this time”. It would, he countered, “be a stupid and mischievous thing, a completely pointless activity. We have a court, we have a number of cases of people arrested, we have a number of election petitions and I think justice is being amply done on that front.”
With neither side yielding, when the vote on the resolution was put to the House, the Government had its way, winning on a divide – 28 to 16 – with only the Speaker, B B Coke, of the 45 members not voting.
Although Opposition Leader Bustamante did not formally participate in the debate, he had much to say during frequent exchanges across the floor with his cousin, Manley.
Manley: “I have been through four elections and I have never called the names of my opponents on platforms.”
Bustamante: “You call mine every 10 minutes!”
Manley: “.Another election evil is deliberate false statements and lies.”
Bustamante: “Now you talk truth.”
Manley: “What is the great question of principle that is at stake? The whole argument is just pure repetition. The public conscience wants to know what?”
Bustamante: “Which is the Government!”
Manley: “. What is all the fuss about?”
Bustamante: “Mi cousin!”
Coombs: “Lord!”
Manley: “Now, if you are coming on a personal level, I am the person responsible as chairman of the PNP. I am the person responsible.”
Bustamante: “For what? Bogus voting?”
Manley: “I am not accusing the leader of the Labour Party of a system of false voting.
Bustamante: “You would not accuse your cousin!”
Manley: “.I would not accuse the organising body of the Jamaica Labour Party of organising bribery as a systematic activity. I was not called from the cane piece.”
Bustamante: “I was never near a cane piece!”
Manley: “The leader of the Opposition says if I made the remark outside the House.”
Bustamante: “I would put you in jail!”
Wills Isaacs: “How long would you sentence him for?”
Bustamante: “Just one night.”