Dear Editor,

For many Jamaicans, the voter registration card is just a form of national identification. As I am aware, there are three instruments of national identification in Jamaica: The Jamaican passport ($6,500), the driver’s licence ($4,500+ under-the-table fee), and the voter registration card.

The costs being prohibitive, most Jamaicans enumerate for the voter registration card, which is provided free of charge, instead of paying high fees for a passport or driver’s licence. Many people who possess a voter registration card have absolutely no intention of voting for any of the political parties. Both major political parties are fully aware of this, as evidenced by their frequent appellations to the so-called uncommitted voters.

Given the People’s National Party’s (PNP) recent overt demonstration of disrespect and contempt for voters when they spuriously and frivolously chickened out of the proposed pre-election national debates, the importance of these uncommitted voters who possess voter identification cards has never been more significant.

This election presents a real opportunity for the uncommitted, which are usually apathetic about voting, to make this election result more representative of the will of a wider cross section of the populace. I have always had serious reservations about diehard party supporters who remain religiously loyal regardless of the wrongs that their party does. I am deeply affronted by the notion that a party could regard my vote as ‘done deal’ regardless of the policies it espouses.

The word democracy is the result of a fusion of two Greek words, ‘kratia’ and ‘demos’, which mean ‘rule of’ and ‘common people’, respectively; hence, democracy is the rule of the ordinary (common) people. If the Jamaican democracy is to be meaningful, etymologically speaking, then political parties should be very keen about earning votes, not taking them for granted. While this is applicable to both the PNP and the Jamaica Labour Party, recent events would suggest that it is the PNP that is in dire need of a remedial course in civics.

I am calling on those Jamaicans who acquired voter registration cards, chiefly because they needed an affordable national ID, to take things one important step further, to actually vote on February 25, 2016. This, I think, will go a far way in reminding our politicians of the meaning of democracy, something to which they only pay lip service. After all voting, rather than abstaining, is the best way to register our righteous indignation for those who take our votes for granted. Wishful thinking? Time will tell.

K Ian Davis

Tortola

British Virgin Islands

kidavis35@yahoo.com