If it goes awry, blame Danville

Dawn Ritch, Columnist

For some considerable time now, experts have said it's going to be a close general election tomorrow.

I have never thought so, and have nothing to go on save the fact that, for the first time, a woman is president of one of the two major political parties. Like it or not, there's a real difference this time. It will be a significant factor in the outcome. People's perceptions of what they can expect of the winner will play a major role.

The other -and principal -factors in tomorrow's election are on-the-ground organisation and mobilisation of the vote into the ballot box.

Polls have consistently shown that the voter base of the People's National Party (PNP) is larger than that of the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP). There is also a public perception that Labourites don't come out in the rain because they are too 'stoosh'. Equally it is said that comrades will walk in the mud, swim if they have to, to cast their votes.

When the National Democratic Movement (NDM) was launched by Bruce Golding in 1995, it was a very impressive sight indeed. That political party got ratings in the public opinion polls that they have not seen since, nor will ever see again.

Yet, in the shadows of that very launch were seasoned politicians who wondered how long it would last. Being a politician is like being a Jehovah's Witness. You have to knock on people's doors, door after door, and be emotionally prepared for rejection and to be run like a dog. And to do it every day.

There will be aspersions cast upon your character, and you have to have the stomach for that sort of thing. You can't cut and run.

Looking around themselves at the launch of the NDM, many couldn't see that determination.

The make-up of the attendees, the president included, was an upper middle-class melee much more comfortable with platform speeches and advertising. Not for them the mud and the rain and the stink of human contact.

Golding is now leader of the JLP. If his habits hold true, he will not be the leader of the political party which is best prepared for election day. The party with the smaller 'die-hearted' base is faced with the challenge of not only feeding its party workers, but of getting out the vote.

Although the biggest commercial event in the country, election day is oddly not a day on which money reigns supreme. I don't even think that $25,000 a vote could significantly influence the outcome of any election.

Commitment counts

What counts is commitment. Commitment to get out of your yard and cast your vote for whom you believe in. Perhaps it's the ideology left over from the 1970s, but curiously enough, people believe that the PNP stands for something. It has always been an electoral difficulty for the JLP that nobody has that sense of them, whatever it may be.

S the experts say it will be a close election, I think that commitment will make all the difference.

Certainly the PNP will need to rely upon the commitment of its voters, because the Director of Elections, Danville Walker, has ensured it has nothing else.

On the very day when the Bill Johnson poll showed that the JLP had slipped into the lead because the country was vexed about hurricane relief, this newspaper reported that 154 polling stations were severely damaged, 92 sustained minor damage, and that 'other arrangements' were being made.

This is the same Electoral Commission of Jamaica now having a press conference, which earlier, had been prepared to provoke a constitutional crisis if the election were delayed by more than a week because of the hurricane disaster. This is why the general election is being held tomorrow, September 3.

This is the same all-seeing and all-knowing Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) advising us one week later, that they are in a bit of a mess themselves.

Yet only last week, Walker, who thought himself president of the island, had dictated in the most unseemly terms that anything other than September 3 would not suit him. The media, lawyers, the Opposition, and non-governmental organisations all piled in to agree with him.

I cannot agree that any organisation should take away that prerogative from the Prime Minister.

Yet, it happened. Danville Walker and Professor Errol Miller, chairman of the EOJ, did it. Mrs. Simpson Miller has agreed to go to a general election while Jamaicans are understandably resentful about a hurricane.

Did it not occur to either Mr. Walker or Professor Miller to make a proper assessment before setting the date of an election? This was not their prerogative in the first place, but to botch it in the second adds insult to injury. The correct course of action would have been to give the Prime Minister a window in which she might call it. Not to name the day as though she were the outlaw, and notthey.

Walker is therefore on notice for tomorrow. Even without a hurricane, there are usually hundreds of people who can't find their polling stations, or who are not registered to vote at the polling stations to which they have arrived.

No half measures

Expecting voters to go looking now for blue tarpaulins is a bit much. Walker has behaved in a manner both reckless and arrogant. Any mess-up tomorrow is his responsibility, and that of the EOJ.

I am not particularly confident about Walker's 'other arrangements'. When he was made head of the Office of National Reconstruction after Hurricane Ivan, under P.J Patterson, he did not distinguish himself. Not much happened, and people who suffered from that hurricane are still vexed about it. He wasn't a success there either.

There are no half measures in Jamaica. The island is always full of verve and excitement. This is why all eyes are upon us. The question now is whether or not Asafa Powell will panic and come third, or Veronica Campbell will win the gold medal.