POLITICAL AD WATCH - Attack ads on the increase

Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Sunday | August 12, 2007

With the campaign for the August 27 general election now in its final phase, both major political parties seem to be stepping up their advertising attacking the character and capability of the opposing leaders..

Attack ads from both the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) have been taking on a noticeably more aggressive tone since nomination day (August 7), with advertising messages more closely mirroring some of the platform rhetoric and tension, particularly in constituencies believed to be very close.

Examples of such negative advertising were the two full-page PNP ads in The Gleaner of August 7 and 8 questioning the reliability and trustworthiness of JLP Leader Bruce Golding.

Similarly, two new JLP TV ads seek to cast doubt on the competence and steadiness of the PNP president and Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, and to minimise the 'Portia factor', which polls say is one of the strengths of the PNP.

In one of the newspaper ads, voters are warned: "Don't vote for a flip flop." The visuals show two images of Mr. Golding, one superimposed on a tattered blue NDP slipper and the other on a green JLP slipper. The tag line is 'VOTEfor a leader you can TRUST'.

The second newspaper ad has a large headline, 'TRUSTWORTHY' in bold orange lettering across the page. In the centre of the page is a pair of sturdy boots (orange of course) with the benchmark 'TRIED, TESTED, PROVEN'.

A similar theme is in a radio advertisement that also appeared this week, casting doubt on the JLP promises about funding education.

In that advertisement, the JLP is taken to task for allegedly changing its education promise from 'free education' to 'free tuition' to 'free endorsed fees'. The narrator warns voters not to trust a party which cannot even be consistent with the promises.

Flip flops

The trust issue is a major part of the PNP campaign to get voters to think twice about giving power to a leader who not only flip flops from one party to another, but who makes promises that are not likely to be delivered.

In the first of three national debates, Wednesday night, PNP vice-president Dr. Peter Phillips claimed that the promises made by the JLP in its 2007 manifesto would cost the country at least $60 billion, and questioned how it would be financed.

JLP chairman, Dr. Kenneth Baugh, who debated Phillips on social issues, did not dispute the figure but simply asserted that "there is no doubt that we can find this kind of money within a budget of $380 billion to finance these important interventions."

The PNP strategy is clearly based on polling data indicating that most of the persons saying they will vote JLP will do so because they think it is time for a change. Hence, the message is to suggest that the change may not be worth the effort.

While the PNP was seeking to attack Mr. Golding on the trust issue, one PNP ad that has been getting heavy rotation is one affirming the trustworthiness of the PNP president.

In that TV advertisement that aired several times on both TVJ and CVM this past week, Mrs. Simpson Miller is shown, in a mood of sincerity, asserting, "I have never misled the Jamaican people" and pledging that she does not intend to makepromises that she cannot deliver on.

The ad also contains many images of Mrs. Simpson as Prime Minister, engaging with the people. There is a female narrator urging 'Sister P' to press ahead with her work on behalf of the people.

Targeting Portia

One of the new JLP ads, 'Don't Draw Mi Tongue' is perhaps the harshest attack ad of the campaign so far. It has generated much comment and is likely to draw strong reaction from PNP supporters who will certainly take exception to the portrayal of their leader.

The ad takes the style of a 'confrontation' between the PNP leader and the JLP Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, by juxtaposing comments they made on separate occasions.

It opens with a sound byte from Simpson Miller affirming her performance as minister of local government. Then Shaw, in an attacking posture, is shown asking why she did not prevent some $2-billion from "going down the drain" at the National Solid Waste Management Agency when she had ministerial responsibility for that agency.

The same technique is used to raise questions about "slackness" at the Tourist Board when Simpson Miller was minister.

The ad then resurrects Mrs. Simpson Miller's fiery, aggressive 'don't draw mi tongue' speech on the 2002 campaign when she declared that she would not be dragged by Shaw's needling in "your little dirty politics".

The voice-over at the end declares that 'Sista P can't manage the prime minister work'.

The second TV ad opens with a shot of Mrs. Simpson Miller saying that she still maintains contact with the village of her birth to the extent that she can call a farmer there to talk about anything.

Pure foolishness

The scene then shifts to a man, apparently in a yam field, answering his cellphone, suggesting that the caller is indeed the PNP leader.

He then engages in an imaginary conversation saying, among other things, that Mrs. Simpson Miller has been doing "pure foolishness" since becoming Prime Minister more than a year ago.

Then he disavows authorship of the remark: "Ah no mi say so, ah K.D. Knight say so." The next image is that of K.D. Knight, the former minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade saying that someone might be a popular leader, but if the person could not hold the party together, the party would lose.

The ad was an obvious play on one of the themes of the 2006 race for leadership of the PNP when Knight and some other key supporters of Peter Phillips openly questioned Mrs. Simpson Miller's managerial competence.

That approach did not work and, in the end, Mrs. Simpson Miller triumphed over the intellectual and organisational strength of the PNP leadership, most of whom were against her.

The JLP could well find that a direct attack could generate sympathy and support among the masses who are believed, according to some polls, to constitute her base and which is also the largest grouping in the electorate.