Peter Espeut | Charge and countercharge

At least they are arguing about issues and performance, not battling it out with guns and Molotov cocktails like in the past. As the silly season of election campaigning intensifies, the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) strike at each other’s throats. Portfolio spokesmen for the PNP claim non-performance and even malfeasance in government ministries, while cabinet ministers accuse the opposition of fake news and even libel as they try to convince the public that things in Jamaica are the best they have ever been.

It really is a battle of the public relations (PR) consultants. “We have a ramshackle healthcare system”, says the PNP. “We inherited it from you”, says the JLP. They may both be right.

“Children are dying because of a lack of paediatric ventilators, and spaces in high dependency units and intensive care units” says the PNP; “There is enough equipment and special care spaces out there; things are the best they have ever been” says the JLP. Who is right and who is promoting fake news? The prime minister says he intends to clamp down on persons who spread fake news. He needs to be careful.

“The results in the primary exit profile (PEP) examination have improved; more children have been placed in a school of their choice than ever before” says the education minister. The children (or their parents) used to list only three choices; now they list all of seven choices. This was an educated move! Now almost everyone will be placed in a school of their choice. Tell us, Minister, how many got their first choice, and how many got number seven?

But that is not a mystery. Jamaica has a very small number of high-quality high school spaces, almost all in church-owned and trust schools (one ranking has only one government-owned high school in the top 30). Let us say that number of high-quality places is X. Whatever their performance, whether their grades are high or low, the top X students will always get the top places. Christopher Columbus!

PATTERSON REPORT

What we want to hear is that the Patterson Report is being implemented, and so now we have an additional 10 or 100 or 1,000 high-quality spaces so more children can get a top-quality high school education. Neither the PNP nor the JLP has been able to fix our ramshackle education system which is the author of inequality and poverty (and crime) in Jamaica.

The police PR unit is very active and skilful; if the number of murders in a police division drops by two they are quick to tell us by what percentage murders have fallen; but when murders are up by one or two, they are up by one or two. Of course we are not told whether murders in the adjoining divisions are up or down, which could tell us that the murderers are just moving around. But amid the news of falling crime, none of us feels safer.

Crime including murders ran rampant when the PNP was in government, and – like the JLP – they seem to be out of ideas, or at least they haven’t shared their anti-crime plan with us, if they have one.

The preferred strategy of the JLP is to declare interminable states of emergency during which they would round up all persons of interest and hold them in indefinite detention; with the violence-producers behind bars, crime will be reduced (for a time) until the footloose Mr Bigs find other footsoldiers.

But scraping up persons of interest and putting them in indefinite detention violates our present constitution. What constitutional changes does the government have in mind that do not require a referendum? Let us hear it all now before we vote in the referendum to remove the monarchy. Trust in the government is at an all-time low; they have a track record of lightening almost overnight constitutional changes without notice. Let us see all the planned changes first!

The PNP is not saying what it will do about constitutional reform when it wins the next election. Are they any better? How are we to know?

The government is dumbfounded at the huge swing to the PNP in the recent local government elections, and the huge lead the PNP has over them in recent independent opinion polls. This is what has energised the PNP to attack! Attack! Attack!

GO ON THE ATTACK

But the Government has decided to go on the attack!

“If the people only knew,” the government says to itself, “all the positive things we have done, they would never ever vote for the PNP again! And so the problem is our communications strategy. It can’t be that we are doing anything wrong. So, let us fire the minister of information, and the party information manager, and flood the airways with good news about what the government has done, is doing, and will do.”

The public relations budget of every ministry and government agency – taxpayers’ money – must be used to spread the JLP gospel between now and the general election.

“Unemployment is at its lowest level in history” (but we won’t mention the 800,000 persons not in the labour force).

“Foreign exchange reserves are at an all-time high”, (but food prices have also gone up).

“We have awarded the highest public sector wage increases in history”, (but we won’t crow about awarding ourselves the most humongous pay raises in history). The PNP politicians have taken theirs, and are laughing all the way to the bank.

Quite frankly, patriotic Jamaicans have very little to choose between the JLP and the PNP. Both in government have done good things, but they both have presided over huge public sector corruption, and fight among themselves over who is better at it.

I don’t know if either side will come out way ahead in the campaign of charge and countercharge. What is going to make the difference in the next election is what people wish to avoid.

If the JLP is re-elected, they will probably push ahead to reform the constitution to give politicians more power over the people; they will probably push ahead to marginalise Jamaica’s anti-corruption apparatus making politicians less accountable; transparency in the award of government contracts will probably continue to decrease; they will probably continue to support mining interests to convert our natural forests into mined-out holes in the ground; they will probably continue to convert Jamaica’s A-1 agricultural lands into commercial and residential complexes; they will probably push ahead to amend the education act and regulations to reduce the power of churches and trusts over their own schools.

No matter the good news broadcasts, even if the two sides are equally corrupt, there comes a time to change the snout in the trough.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com