Fabian Lewis | Stop insulting the Jamaican people, PNP

I note with growing consternation, and sometimes laughter, at the many commentaries about the massive ‘murderation’ meted out to the People’s National Party (PNP) at the hands of a marauding Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) election machinery, and a well-crafted public relations strategy focused on its performance.

These commentaries are all focused on what the PNP did not do and how low the voter turnout was and vote buying by the JLP. I find most of the commentaries to be grossly insulting to the Jamaican people. Especially the vote-buying allegations. What all of this shows is the utter contempt that many in this country has for the sensibilities of the Jamaican people. And the entitlement attitude that many has, in the sense they are the only ones that should run this country. Again, that’s incomprehensibly insulting to the Jamaican people.

The PNP and its army of minions don’t seem to get it that the rejection of it started in 2007 and only got a reprieve by a set of unfortunate circumstances that brought down the then JLP Government by 2011 – as soon as the Jamaican people got a leader they could go for in the JLP, the party was back in power four years later. Consequently, the JLP won every election held after that. Even winning East Portland, beating the most popular person in the PNP at the time, in a PNP stronghold. It was very clear that the people of Jamaica wanted nothing to do with the PNP.

I will never forget the victory speech given by Andrew Holness then in which he talked about some people believing their name is on the land title of Jamaica. It was being removed by the Jamaican people.

The PNP spent 18.5 years in power and their output was nothing but corruption, waste, mismanagement, and the destruction of the hopes and dreams of many Jamaicans.

PEOPLE TIRED OF PNP

The slaughtering at the polls on September 3 wasn’t a matter of vote buying; it was the culmination of the process of rejecting the PNP that started in 2007. People are just tired of the PNP, plain and simple. The PNP is like that family member everyone is tired of seeing.

I will say further, while the people rejected the PNP, it had good grounds to do so. The JLP, over the last 4.5 years, has performed so well that for the first time in history the governing party campaigned almost exclusively on what it has done in an election.

All the PNP could muster against that was, it was in the pipeline from they were there. But, as Floyd Green retorted in one of the past debates, “the PNP is the pipeline national party, as they laid pipes and never connected them to a water source”. And that is at the root of the continued rejection of the PNP by the Jamaican electorate.

And in some ways, I encourage the PNP and its defenders to continue thinking that the election lost was because of vote buying, as the more you posit that insult, the Jamaican people will make sure they return all JLP members of parliament in five years’ time, and taking 11 more of the few you now have.

You think you are pulverised as yet? Just wait until five years’ time.

editorial@gleanerjm.com