The news yesterday morning highlighted a fairly common scene. The PNP held a press conference speaking specifically to the emerging incidents of leptospirosis and the health threat posed to the nation in the aftermath of Melissa. At the podium was Dr Alfred Dawes, PNP spokesperson on health and in the background were party dignitaries headed by party leader, Mr. Mark Golding giving sanction to what was said.
As aware as I am of the sophistry of the Westminster model and the deep wisdom embodied in a binary approach to government where it is the absolute duty of the Opposition party to oppose, (that is its specific function), I could not help but recognize, for all of the posturing, what came across as a very schoolmarmish attempt to ‘school’ the government on the issues involved and what must be done to address them. The fact that this is typical of most parliamentary exchange should be both wearisome and annoying, but instead, like most normalized human behavior, it both creates and indicates a set of value norms that becomes culturally routinized and personified. Many Jamaicans might not even notice how absolutely infantile it seems for a public leader to take that approach.
Most of the items Dr. Dawes took the time to spell out in his finger-pointing approach were actually very obvious and very-well known, but our political system works on the assumption that government is kept on its tippy-toes by being constantly cajoled by the Opposition for its apparently glaring ineptitude. The more mature and much more welcome approach of an opposition, in the very challenging situation of a major national crisis, highlighting government’s shortfalls by pointing to its own initiatives while adopting a supportive but concerned disposition might not even occur to our present batch of politicians, cultured as they have been by a system with an authoritarian legacy upon which democratic practice has been superimposed.
I wondered how much more effective and credible might such a strategy be, where rather than seeking to style whoever is in government as a clueless set of idiots, Opposition instead focused its limited resources on demonstrating, especially among its own constituencies, what good governance looks like (even with limited resources, which would prove innovativeness and the ability to mobilize and motivate) and highlighting those achievements, which might prove more politically effective than pretentious vaunting.
Then it would commend itself by something more than just expert posturing. But then, this might strengthen the dangerous illusion that we are a self-governing people rather than just a people with an appointed government.
Can we conceive of a workable politics devoid of the blame/shame game so apparently vital in our culture? But what would be the impetus for such when shame and guilt are such absolutely essential ingredients in our religion and interpersonal socialization?
Predatory politics and hegemonic religion require condemnation as a necessary tool for their insular objectives. Neither is likely, however, to evolve systems that actually and effectively serve the nation as a whole.
YeKengalé 