Poor People’s Politics
More than 40 years ago, when I was Editor of Public Opinion, I happened to be present on two occasions when my paper was literally, ritually and publicly torn to bits. One was in Parliament, when the Minister of Education, Mr Edwin Allen, tore the latest edition of the papers into small shreds as he attacked me for criticising the Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante.
A few weeks later I happened to be present at a meeting of the PNP’s National Executive Council (to which I had been elected at the Party’s conference) as the Leader of the PNP, Mr Norman Manley, ripped the paper into two or three pieces as he denounced “the Editor” for alleged snobbery. The reason was my description of the PNP KSA council as “small men doing small things.”
I am reasonably certain that Mr Manley knew perfectly well that when I referred to’ small men’ I was referring not class but to the petty behaviour of the councillors. He had to say something because I had offended one of the most powerful men in the party, the former Mayor and party strongman, Frank Spaulding.
I remember all this because as I watched events unfold over the past two or three weeks, I wondered what Mr Manley would have made of the PNP’s recent misfortunes.
He would not, I am certain, have tolerated the behaviour of any Minister who managed to bring the party into discredit, as several of them have done recently. He would, I am sure, have used the opportunity to clean house, ruthlessly.
The fact that Mrs Simpson-Miller has not done that is probably due to the fact that unlike Norman Manley, she does not yet enjoy the unchallenged authority he did. But it is a missed opportunity because had she fired two more ministers she would probably have put her authority beyond dispute – at least for the present.
The Trafigura affair no matter how it ends, is a serious indictment of Jamaican politics, not simply of the PNP.
In this country as in every other, no matter who signs the cheques, the people eventually and inevitably, are the ones who pay. Let me explain by an analogy with radio broadcasting. MOst people believe that radio broadcasting is a free good, like rain. In fact the taxpayer/consumer pays at least twice for everything heard on radio. The advertisements are paid for in the cost of the advertised product and the advertising budgets are subsidised by the taxpayer/consumer in the form of income tax allowances.
Similarly, the people who finance political parties do not do it as charitable work, but because they expect some form of return on the money they have invested in political parties. These returns may not be direct benefits to the financier, but may simply result in a friendlier and more profitable atmosphere in which he can operate.
Despite all the hooha, it is clear that all political parties in jamaican history must have been financed by somebody and those that survive have been the most successful in attracting contributions.
In the case of the PNP the group structure does provide some fairly predictable cash for the party, but not enough for the party to survive. The JLP, without any group structure, is forced to rely even more substantially on private donations. The end result is that whatever the parties say about what they are going to do for the people there is built-in to the system, another set of priorities. Everybody understands this.
What is to me nauseating is the pretence by some politicians that their devotion is totally to the public interest and that the financing of parties should be left to the vagaries of the market. That is a recipe for big man control of the parties. We need to devise a better system now.
The inherent contradiction between the public interest and the private interest has long been recognised in some countries, notably in Europe, in India and to a certain extent in the United States. But the cost of electioneering in these days of radio, television and the internet is prohibitive. Most of the people running for office in the United States are millionaires or nearly so. If they are not millionaires their friends are, and the whole structure of the lobbying industry is based on the ‘legal’ bribery of politicians as the Abramoff scandal has recently disclosed to those who didn’t know.
The people are the ones who pay – either in missing services or misplaced priorities. When planning decisions are made without reference to the public interest, the whole community pays and in cases like the Spanish hotel-building spree, will continue to pay for generations.
If the people are inevitably and eventually those who really finance elections I can see no reason for us to interpose between them unelected agents in the form of businessmen who, no matter how high-minded, must pout their own interests first. They would be fools not to do so.
It seems therefore clear to me that the people of Jamaica should insist that if they are going to finance the electioneering process, they should have the final say in how it works. It will not be difficult to devise a system which allows controlled private donations to parties while at the same time building in to the process, equity, so that private donations do not swamp the system and end up by buying elections and politicians.
Elections should be financed by the taxpayer/consumer, up front. It will be more economical and certainly, more transparent and accountable..
Government and opposition should be allocated the same amount of money based on the number of electors in each constituency. New parties would enter the system if they could prove by getting voters’ signatures, that they have a certain level of support.
Audited accounts of how and where the money is spent must be demanded on pain of swingeing fines and or imprisonment.
All candidates must make public declarations of their assets and income and the successful ones will be required to make such declarations annually. This rule should be extended to the managers and directors of public companies in the public interest.
None of this is new or outlandish. Much of it is already law in the United States, Britain and other countries. Everybody can find out what the pay of University professors or Superintendents of Police is. Why should it be different for people in parliament or the private industry?
Ending tribalism
As somebody once said, the struggle for scarce benefits is one of the prime movers of the Jamaican political process. The most vivid manifestation of this is in the formation of ‘garrison’ constituencies since the 1960s, partisan strongholds which are operated as beachheads from which the party tries to subdue and capture neighbouring areas.
Garrison constituencies are important because we depend on the outmoded notion of constituencies in elections which are really national events, dominated by national issues and parties. “Garrisons” are in fact, a form of do-it-yourself gerrymandering – carving out safe seats by force.
We can get rid of the garrisons by a simple expedient: introducing proportional representation in which the entire island is a constituency for which each party submits a list of candidates. This would mean that while individual politicians would still be able to influence voters, they would not be able to blackmail their way into parliament.
There would be another, huge advantage; there would be no more lopsided victories based on small majorities in key constituencies, as happened in 1967. Parties would be more willing to talk to each other and to bargain in a democratic fashion to secure the real public interest.
A little history
I have a very personal interest in all of this. More than 70 years ago, a poor Baptist parson with Maroon antecedents decided to contest the elections in Trelawny. His opponent was a man who either owned or was the attorney for one-sixth of the arable land in Trelawny, a man who had been Custos of the parish for 15 years and Member of the Legislative Council for 25. He ran the local building society and was Chairman of the Parochial Board (Parish Council) and he was the only lawyer in Falmouth. His name was Ewen and his opponent was my father.
Against all the odds, my father won the election. In those days, electors had to be people who paid a certain amount of tax – ‘ten shilling voters’ and their representatives had to pay even more tax – they had to be people of ‘substance’.
When my father won there was widespread consternation. He was known to have been influenced by Marcus Garvey and although he was supported by liberal ‘leftwing’ figures like Harry and Vernon Arnett their support was tantamount to class betrayal.
Mr Ewen launched an election petition seeking to have my father's victory nullified on the ground that he was not qualified to be elected. He was too poor. As the petitioner he had first choice of lawyers and went to N.W Manley K.C. After a trial lasting several days the judge found for Mr Ewen, after hearing lots of evidence, including denials by the tax collector that he had ever seen my father. My father’s lawyer was J.A.G SmithK.C., then nearing the end of his life.
Shortly thereafter Mr Ewen dropped dead, an event popularly supposed to have been mysteriously engineered by my grandmother, Miss Kate, whose African connections were thought to be very powerful.
After the trial Norman Manley wrote to the judge declaring that he could not believe that the people should be prevented from choosing their own representative simply because he was not a wealthy man. That was Norman Manley’s first recorded statement on Jamaican politics and may have contributed to his position later when O/ T Fairclough and some others connected to Public Opinion persuaded him to start and lead the People’s National Party.
Copyright©2006 John Maxwell
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