Why PNP Lost
IN an early post-mortem, political analysts blame the thrashing taken by the People’s National Party (PNP) in last Thursday’s local government elections on the attitude of the party’s leadership to the polls, loss of trust in the ruling party and the worsening economic conditions.
“The first thing to note,” said University of the West Indies (UWI) professor, Brian Meeks, “is that the leadership of the PNP seems to have taken the view that this election was not a ‘life or death’ situation for them.”
Meeks said there were indications also that PNP supporters were in a state of demoralisation as a result of economic conditions, after failing to realise expected financial benefits coming out of the party’s victory in the general elections last year.
“Not only have these benefits not come, but they have gone in the opposite direction; so they are demoralised, while Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) supporters seem to have taken the attitude that they now have nothing to lose and therefore made greater efforts to win,” argued Meeks who works out of the UWI’s Department of Government.
Shalmon Scott, the disaffected former JLP mayor of Montego Bay, expressed a similar view, adding that there had been a build-up of resentment toward the PNP by an electorate who felt they were not made fully aware of the extent to which the budget would negatively impact them.
“Dr Omar Davies has created an impression, rightly or wrongly, that the electorate were not told the extent of the economic difficulties that they were about to come upon prior to the 2002 (general) elections. There is, therefore, a subdued sense of betrayal that has resulted in anger and disillusionment,” Scott told the Sunday Observer.
Scott’s reference was apparently to the finance minister’s statement to a party caucus earlier this year that suggested that certain budgetary expenditure last year was made with the October general elections in mind. Davies dismissed the interpretation of his statement but under pressure from critics, apologised to the nation for making it.
The Government’s image took another battering when the local currency began a precipitous slide, dragging prices with it, before the slide was halted by action from the central bank. The huge tax package introduced by Davies in the 2003-2004 budget would also have muddied the Government’s image.
“The matter of the taxes introduced by Finance Minister Omar Davies contributed to the PNP’s loss,” added Lloyd B Smith, editor of the Montego Bay-based Western Mirror newspaper. “A lot of people are very upset about some of the items being taxed and the prices they have to encounter at the supermarket and elsewhere. So it boiled down to bread and butter issues and I think those persons who went out to vote wanted to register that they were not happy with the economy.”
Meeks remarked that it was an “irony of politics” that the PNP Government “which has committed to the devolution of local government reform, now ends up in a landslide defeat to the Opposition party”. Much would now depend on the extent to which the JLP could use their control of the parish councils to prove their ability to govern effectively at the local level, he said.
“If the JLP can prove themselves capable of solving problems and delivering services required by citizens rather than just being a strong Opposition, then the people will see them as a viable alternative,” Meeks suggested.
“On the other hand, if the JLP continues on a path of only seeking to ‘bring down’ the Government while the PNP moves ahead with programmes that the people feel are being of real benefit to them, then the PNP could retain the ascendancy in 2007.”
But chartered accountant Fitz Casserly was of the view that the Opposition’s control of the parish councils did not give them enough power to carry out any meaningful changes.
“The parish councils might be able to clean some drains and fix some potholes but the major issues of unemployment, the debt burden and inadequate economic growth still rest with central government,” Casserly told the Sunday Observer.
The accountant said that he expected the Opposition to use their new popular support “to pressurise the Government on burning issues such as the unemployment situation which is hitting very hard in most communities at the local level”.
Said Casserly: “Central government can be put in a very embarrassing position if the parish councils are pointing out the need for more employment and even identifying projects that can benefit the community when the central government can only say it is broke.”
Political historian, Troy Cain, described the P J Patterson administration as a “lame-duck government”, in which “even though the PNP still maintains control of the majority of seats in Parliament, the fact is that they now constitute a minority government”.
Cain said the PNP would now have to be careful not to appear “vindictive” to the JLP-controlled parish councils. “If the central government is perceived as holding back its support to local government, then the PNP risks losing the support of its own people on the ground, who will also suffer as a result of such neglect,” he cautioned.
Cain also sounded an ominous warning to the PNP: “The balance of forces that started to change from the St Ann by-election in 2001 and continued to shift in the 2002 general elections, have now changed decisively; if only four PNP parliamentarians cross the floor, the Government will be in crisis… anything can happen between now and 2007.”
Scott suggested the PNP was already in a crisis situation. “The fact is that what was responsible for the PNP winning elections over the last 14 years, despite an economy in decline and the consequences that flowed from the decline, is the people felt comfortable with the PNP. They trusted the PNP… But when they start to see exposes about the number of consultants, including non-performing members of parliament who have lost their seats… they developed growing anger and resentment against the PNP Government, reminiscent of the same kind of resentment built up against Michael Manley prior to the 1980 election and Hugh Shearer prior to the 1972 elections.”
Smith, who ran unsuccessfully for the JLP in 1997 and Horace Chang, the JLP member of parliament for North West St James, credited the Opposition party’s organisation on the ground as an important factor in its victory.
“I think they (the JLP) were very well organised and focused. We saw very early signs of that,” said Smith. “I think also that they chose candidates who were more easily identified and with a mixture of old and new. These are people who had some amount of high profile in their respective community. And they were much better organised on the ground, I think, in terms of their machinery. It was clear that they did not have as much money to spend as the PNP. So they used whatever resources they had very wisely and strategically and this paid off,” he added.
Chang attested to the JLP’s low-budget campaign and their extensive on-the-ground campaigning.
He said campaigning inside his constituency cost just over $2 million, including costs incurred on election day. But the limited funds, he said, did not take away from their campaign efforts.
“The campaigning was more demanding than the general elections… Our key district elders had to get out there and maintain the connection with the workers on a regular basis and educate them on both the national and local issues and I think it worked,” he said.
But Chang conceded that the PNP’s failure to address some basic concerns of residents in the run-up to the elections also served to give his party the edge.
“There were a lot of problems that were frustrating to the citizens. Half of Norwood, for example, was without water for the last two weeks. That’s not the spirit or background on which you can have a guarantee of turning out voters,” he said.
And echoing the PNP leadership’s good-natured acceptance of the defeat, Gerard Mitchell, who won the Mount Salem seat on the party’s ticket, admitted his party’s need to look at how the electorate was handled.
“I think there is going to be the need for the party to get back on the ground and to look at some of the strategies that we’ve been employing in terms of dealing with the people. And I think that what we need to do now is to seek to improve the way we govern,” he said, adding that the party would still be a force to be reckoned with at the local government level.
“We are still government and I think we have a last opportunity to show the people we care and that we are putting their interest first… We have lost the majority in the council but we are still going to be a force to be reckoned with at the council and we are going to ensure that the whole process of local government reform is continued,” said Mitchell, who is also Montego Bay’s incumbent deputy mayor.