With mere days to go before the general election, there is basic confirmation that no ground will be ceded by either the People’s National Party (PNP) or the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to the numerous calls for the hosting of the national debate series. In fact, what has been playing out between the leadership of both sides is a verbal tug-o-war hosted in the print and electronic media, with charges, countercharges, and demands for apologies for incendiary remarks through the intermediaries of either side’s legal team.

The developments have been met with infuriating responses from certain sections of the Jamaican community, with the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s (PSOJ) President William Mahfood expressing that organisation’s disgust with the development, as the debate series, pre-set for television and other electronic media, will mean significant commercial losses for the media houses as well as advertisers who had massed themselves for the anticipated boon from the series.

The question that ought to be asked and answered, though, is just how much of an impact does a televised debate have on the possible outcome of a Jamaican general election?

A possible second question would be what percentage of our electorate would actually utilise the exchanges gleaned from the hosted series as an influencer in their final voting decision?

How Jamaica votes

Historically, only about 52 per cent of Jamaicans who are registered to vote actually do so; and more and more electors have been staying away from the process for a variety of reasons, principal among which has been the reported view that they feel unrepresented by the parties involved in the process.

I took a look at the Jamaican electoral list for the upcoming election and noted that there are 1.82 million eligible electors listed, an increase of 176,000 voters more than the 1.64 million electors that were available for the 2011 election.

The JLP’s job, of course, is to capture, at the very least, 51 per cent of the turnout; and if the voter turnout is low, history will not be on their side. In 2007, when the same JLP defeated the People’s National Party after a near 19 years in office, there were 1.29 million electors eligible to vote then, and of that number 822,296 electors, or 63 per cent, voted. The PNP received 408, 778 votes to the JLP’s 412, 276, which gave them a 3,498 vote win with 32 seats in the Parliament to the PNP’s 28.

The situation in 2011 was different, in that the voters’ roll went up by 350,000 voters, an increase of 27 per cent, but only 870, 952 people voted in that election (52 per cent) of which the PNP snatched 464, 064 votes to the JLP’s 408,778, which translated into a comfortable 42 seats for the PNP to the JLP’s 21.

Elections, as far as political parties are concerned, are in fact about votes, and in Jamaica this is not different. According to recent Don Anderson polls, more than 48 per cent of Jamaicans polled expressed the view that they were not interested in participating in the electoral process. If that number holds, the upcoming election will be a straight contest for just about 900,000 – 950,000 voters, of which the PNP has the lock on more than 53 per cent.

Most analysts will agree that the PNP has a larger cluster of party diehards in its support column than the JLP, which speaks to why they have amassed more electoral victories than the JLP. It is no secret, either, that the PNP’s ground game on election day is far more organised than the JLP’s, which may well be the reason the PNP is thumbing its nose at the debate process.

Debate shop

The debates, one could argue, may provide more of a benefit to the Opposition than to the incumbent, as all the JLP needs to do is to get its message to a large enough cluster of undecided or otherwise disinterested voters into the “suddenly interested column” in order to bolster its chances.

This brings me back to the intransigence on the part of the PNP to participating in the national election debates. My sense is that the PNP is acutely aware of how weak the JLP’s support structure currently is, as it is no secret that the party has been strapped for cash. In the circumstances, what has transpired in the past week has been nothing more than political gamesmanship on the part of the ruling PNP as it attempts to suck the air out of the JLP’s campaign. Tying up the JLP leader into focusing attention on defending the construction of his mansion, as well as the demands for apologies and retractions for campaign statements made, is, to my mind, political gamesmanship pure and simple.

Regardless of your political stripe, though, the behaviour of the PNP does to a certain extent smack of a certain level of disdain for the JLP on the one hand, and the broader electorate on the other. However, in an era of low voter turnout and increasing voter apathy, it becomes an advantage to the side with the most committed group of diehards and core loyalists.

Outcry for change

I can appreciate the disgust of the PSOJ’s William Mahfood and the Church, but it is the combination of their funding and the Church’s penchant for looking the other way that has bred such an attitude. Maybe they will use their leverage in forcing more positive changes in the future, changes that will long outlive a single election cycle.

Would the Manleys approve this PNP’s approach?

In essence, the PNP is saying that the people who are the consumers of debates are a known demographic and that there is little or no discussion about debates where the majority of the its votes come from and that there is no need to expend any time nor energy in developing any newer communication methodologies because its support group is already locked in by the tribal commitment to its party of choice. This argument runs completely contrary to the PNP that I grew up with in the 1970s, where elocution was its fuel and discourse was its strength. Michael “Joshua” Manley would have loved to be alive today to decimate the debaters on the other side as he articulates the party’s ideals to a knowledge thirsty nation.

I find it absolutely amazing that a political organization could make such an argument in the 21st century, where the electronic media has become considerably more ubiquitous, with much more households owning television sets, and many more Jamaicans having not only access to the Internet but owning personal communication devices which give them access to much wider avenues of information.

Jamaicans need to awake to the dangerous precedent that this anti-voting behaviour has created and recognise too that that this kind of absolute power that comes from electoral dominance has the ability to entrench behaviours that are not in the best interest of the country. When a Government can feel comfortable enough to disregard the feedback from its citizens to its decisions we should be aware that we are treading dangerous waters. Clearly the Government knows its political advantage and, by that token, has little or no regard for the current political opposition; a fault of course of the opposition party itself, but also of the non-participating core of electors.

The entire electorate need to become acutely aware of this scenario and appreciate that just about half-a-million Jamaicans are making a binding decision on how 2.8 million Jamaicans live. One-quarter of our electors are handing our lives over to a political organisation that could not care less what the rest of the country thinks. They have been given the power and they therefore sets the rules…to hell with what the rest of you thinks.

I am certain that the party’s founder, Norman Washington Manley, and his son, the great conceptualiser Michael Norman “Joshua” Manley would be very unhappy with the current developments.

Richard Hugh Blackford is a self-taught artist, writer and social commentator. He shares his time between Coral Springs, Florida and Kingston, Jamaica. www.yardabraawd.com Send comments to the Observer or richardhblackford@gmail.com.