Who cares about local government elections?
After the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC (in modern-day Syria), Ramesses the Great convinced people that the largest chariot battle ever fought had been a great victory for the Egyptians over the Hittite Empire. However, the war ended in a deadlock, followed by a peace treaty. Political fabrication is as old as politics itself. Some would even call it diplomacy.
At his birthday party in 1943, during the Teheran conference, Winston Churchill remarked to Stalin, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
During the last four years of the Second World War, Britain assumed the role of bodyguard by establishing a highly secretive government department called the Political Warfare Executive. It was a clandestine army of talented scientists, artists, novelists, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who used the art of deception to beat Adolf Hitler through an unrelenting onslaught of duplicitous, psychologically charged campaigns against the Nazis to damage their fighting morale.
This office employed a combination of black and white propaganda, the first of which is covert psychological operations, with false information and material intended from a source on one side of a conflict, primarily the opposing side. In contrast, white propaganda has no attempt to hide its origin.
This covert government operation created several underground radio stations which broadcasted misinformation to Germany. For example, when the Germans were preparing Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade the United Kingdom, ‘Aspidistra’, began reporting that Britain imported 200 man-eating sharks from Australia, which were released into the English Channel to eat Germans.
The fact is that there will always be fake news or misinformation with shepherds to drive the ‘herd’ down their path. This is true more so today than ever before, as we live in a world that spreads misinformation in real time. One person just has to press the send button before fact-checking the speech, video, or headline, and before you know it there’s a global propaganda pandemic.
Undoubtedly, misinformation can galvanise people towards fear, anxiety, anarchy, and death. Moreover, it can destabilise a society’s trust in its governance processes and create apathy. Yet geopolitical agents are increasingly using new tools of misinformation, including pseudoscience, to propagate extremist beliefs and even try to sway elections through social media (World Economic Forum, February 2023).
One has to recall the January 6 insurgency on Capitol Hill in the United States and the role that online fake news played leading up to this heinous event.
When ‘All War is Deception’ (Sun Tzu), who do we believe?
The State University of New York Cortland offers its students a course, The Psychology of Pseudoscience, which aims to teach students why misinformation spreads so fast. Pseudoscience may be defined as beliefs that seem scientific but have no basis in natural science. A closer look into the course premise demonstrates that (1) humans confirm beliefs they want to hold through motivated reasoning, and (2) they polarise and strengthen their beliefs by spending time with others who share them. The Internet has amplified by providing a space for communities to form, grow, and spread inaccurate claims (World Economic Forum, February 2023).
American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson concludes that, “Hidden bias can cause a persistent urge to see all that agrees with you and ignore all that does not, even when the countervailing examples abound. Among the many categories about how to fool oneself, the moment pernicious is confirmation bias: You remember the hits and forget the misses. It affects us all. The antidote? Dispassionate, rational analysis.”
But how do we get to dispassionate, rational analysis when so much content comes at us to make an objective decision? What and who should we believe?
During Parliament this week, Minister of Local Government Desmond McKenzie brought a motion to postpone holding local government elections, which are constitutionally due. He cited economic reasons for the postponement. However, the Opposition has been calling on the Government to set an urgent date for this election, saying that the constant postponement weakens our democracy and disenfranchises the Jamaican people. The Private Sector of Jamaica (PSOJ) has also raised the democracy argument for the Government to hold the election.
Based on the Government’s numbers, it won the debate in Parliament on Tuesday. The Opposition walked out.
Who’s your councillor?
If you are reading this, ask yourself who your elected divisional representative is. Do you know?
Did you vote in the last local government election in 2016, or any of them for that matter?
The evidence from the voter turnout in the past local government elections suggests that, perhaps, you did not, as it has steadily declined since 2007. In fact, the voter turnout of Jamaicans eligible to vote in 2016 was 30 per cent, 34 per cent in 2011, and 37.92 per cent in 2007.
Therefore, is the argument about “strengthening our democracy” simply motivated reasoning on our part to show our beliefs in the principles of democracy? Because if nearly 70 per cent of those who could vote did not vote in the last two local government elections, then it’s clear our people are not interested in exercising their choice; our participatory democracy is weak and weakening.
Last September, pollster Don Anderson said this trend has continued for several years, indicating that more Jamaicans are becoming increasingly indifferent to the political process or the parties.
In truth, the Government of Jamaica can find the money to do whatever it wants if it feels the country could benefit. Case in point, when it found $1 billion for islandwide ‘bushing’ a couple of years ago. The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) says it would need just over $1 billion to execute a national election.
So, who cares about whether or not a local government election is held? Is it the people or the politicians?
Remember, “all war is deception”, and politicians can frame arguments on all sides for their intended purposes and strategy. However, when it comes down to it, it’s only the individual with dispassionate analysis, not political misinformation, pseudoscience, or propaganda, that determines the strength of our democracy.
So maybe the Government and the Opposition should use this time wisely to educate Jamaicans on the role and importance of local government and why they should care about it.
For example, constituencies are electorally divided into divisions represented by elected councillors. These councillors use our property taxes to fix parochial interior roads and other infrastructure and maintain street lights, cemeteries, and community centres. But, more importantly, they are responsible for approvals for new construction, additions to existing buildings, burial orders for the dead, infirmaries, and many other essential services that we take for granted.
While there are 63 elected Members of Parliament, in contrast, over 260 elected councillors sit within the 14 parish municipal corporations and Portmore that have entire administrations for roads and works, urban planning, estate management, and poor relief.
Therefore, if we continue to turn a blind eye and not care on that level, the republic we all seek may look and feel like one belonging to a banana variety. It’s time we start paying attention to the tone and tenor of our local representatives and their representation.
Again, what’s the name of your councillor?
Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member.