The west Kingston crisis and party politics - Part 1

The following is the first part of an excerpt from a presentation made by Rupert Lewis, professor of political thought, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, during a symposium 'States of Freedom: Freedom of States' at the Mona Visitors' Lodge, UWI, Mona campus, June 16-18.

There has been an unprecedented national discussion in and out of Parliament, in the Jamaican diaspora, and in the Caribbean and international media over the past 10 months since the United States (US) issued the extradition request for Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

I have been forced, with the rest of society, to think about the ongoing crises on the socio-racial, economic, cultural and political levels. As a result, my presentation discusses the recent crisis in west Kingston.

Imagine that Tivoli Gardens is a Caribbean island and the constellation forces around involves the US, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, the international media, the prime minister, a former prime minister and a popular leader who is wanted by the United States and the Jamaican state. This person is a second-generation leader known to his supporters as 'The President', and he is also an international businessman and one with access to state contracts. He runs a system of justice, provides security to the network of markets nearby and has considerable influence on all that happens in that place.

What kind of political space is this? Does the term garrison really reflect this reality?

I want to approach this presentation from the standpoint of the necessity of redirecting attention to party political life. Very often, the focus has been in the last 20 years on issues of governance and civil society, and these are valid and important concepts that have been made popular by the debate over globalisation, the ideology of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the work of many scholars. However, there is silence on politics, which undergirds so much in civil society and governance structures, culture and economics. I am concerned here with just one element in the organisation of political life and that is the political party.

C.L.R. James in the volume Party Politics in the West Indies argues the goal of politics "is to discuss and plan and to carry out some programme and perspective of our own and then to judge how far you have succeeded or failed, and why ... . The more of this the people do, the bolder and more comprehensive the plans of a Government can be, the more it can defy its enemies. Otherwise, as sure as day, you find you have to shoot them down".

The shooting down of people, to which we have long been accustomed in Jamaica, has a long legacy that goes back to slavery and colonialism, but one must now add the short but important post-colonial period. In the latter period, the shooting down of people is partially a result of developments that have been induced by the transmission belt of politics, which is the political party.

This institution has been neglected as a target of political inquiry in the last 20 years, especially since the death of Carl Stone, and the focus has been on the state and governance procedures that highlight accountability and transparency in the award of contracts, policy frameworks and the legislative agenda.

Powerful criminals

However, the current political crisis in Jamaica indicates that political control of constituencies is manipulated by dons whose financial and gunpower give them influence and put them in a position to influence in not only local but also national politics. These individuals are active players in party life at the grassroots level. Moreover, these players have become part of transnational organisations that have more ready access to resources than many members of Parliament.

If we look at political party formation in Jamaica from 1938 until 2010, we will see the following patterns:

Both the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) are products of the nationalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s. From 1938 to 1989, the PNP, by and large, was a social-democratic party with ideological components constituting a trade union-based left wing that gave way in the 1970s to a left-wing based on the unemployed and underemployed, with strong lumpen social forces who were consolidated in a number of garrison constituencies in the west and central areas of Kingston.

The shift to neoliberal politics in the 1980s in the PNP resulted in the collapse of party building in the traditional sense and its replacement by an electoral machine. This process of party erosion took place especially in the P.J. Patterson years from 1992-2006. There was also the abandonment of political education, which was critical to explaining the ideological platform of democratic socialism that had been adopted in 1974.

In the case of the JLP, which was founded in 1943, Alexander Bustamante and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union took a position that was conservative on economic and social matters and positioned itself to oppose the PNP's socialist platform without having to declare an ideological platform of its own that would carry forward its brand of Jamaican nationalism. The JLP stuck to the status quo in economic and social life. How Jamaica had been conceived and was developing in its evolution from British rule fitted neatly into Bustamante's famous statement "We are with the West". In the context of the Cold War years, this meant support for capitalism and anti-communism.

So, while both parties were nationalistic, the difference was in their conceptions of how Jamaica could be transformed given its racial, social and economic inequalities. The Jamaican landowners and merchants saw the charismatic Bustamante with his extraordinary ability to communicate with the working class and the peasantry as a natural ally, while the middle classes, sections of the business community and urban workers saw Norman Manley, the well-educated Rhodes Scholar and brilliant lawyer, as their hero.

Both parties have rotated in power for 66 years since universal adult suffrage in 1944. In the period since independence in 1962, the JLP has governed for 22 years and the PNP for 26 years, with the PNP having the longest continuing period in office from 1989-2007, a tenure of 18 years.

Electoral machine

The PNP became an electoral machine, with Prime Minister P.J. Patterson astutely taking political advantage of Seaga's crippling leadership of the JLP to have the longest tenure. During the long reign of Patterson, the party became an electoral machine, with party structure, political education about the direction of the country in the changed global circumstances put on the backburner.

There was a shift in the socio-racial leadership of the PNP from the brown middle class to the black middle class leadership, with a focus on using the state and its contracts for enrichment in the same way that Jewish and light-skinned and white Jamaicans had been doing from the 1940s.

Parallel with this is the normalisation of contracts to dons connected to both political parties.

Second, there was anaemic economic growth, the rise of inequality, the escalation of the debt, and the rise of the homicide rate.

The JLP regained power in 2007 under the leadership of Bruce Golding, who returned to the party after abandoning the National Democratic Movement, which he had founded in the mid-1990s. The JLP has been and continues to be an electoral machine with a structure based on the electoral system from polling divisions, scrutineers, runners, right up to the candidates for local government and the constituency caretaker or member of Parliament (MP).

The candidates or representatives of local government and the MP dispense favours and provide a range of services from the Constituency Development Fund, as well as social services such as assisting with the funding of back-to-school items, funerals, wakes and medical prescriptions.

Political representation is onerous and the loyalties built up through these activities provide the party with its hard-core support. However, from the standpoint of politics, both parties have degene-rated and have no other focus but to gain control of government.

What does the extradition request tell us about the political system?

Co-partnerships

It confirms Professor Anthony Harriott's thesis that there is co-partnership between politicians and dons in governance. The party and the State had ceded certain functions to Christopher Coke's multifaceted operations. The Shower Posse, of which he had become the reputed leader, was a product of the Cold War battles against the PNP in the 1970s and 1980 and it had grown way beyond those days to becoming an international drug and gun syndicate.

Governance in Tivoli Gardens had its own justice and security system, its own system of execution and welfare and economic activity around Jamaica's largest network of markets and popular Passa Passa took place in a relatively orderly and peaceful way.

Second, sections of the Jamaican middle class are a core part of the criminal-political linkage on both the PNP and JLP sides of the political divide.

Third, the Jamaican population, by and large, accepted the status quo and Christopher Coke's role. Arguments on the ground included the safety of Coronation Market and downtown and, of course, for JLP supporters' loyalty to a hardcore supporter was a factor that was justified because the PNP had their dons and godfathers as well.

>>Part 2 next week.