‘Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ William Shakespeare

Jamaica is in a sense one of the world’s purest democracies. For the system of government that has evolved here since we gained independence is almost entirely a product of the collective will of the people.

Whatever else their sins, our colonial masters left Jamaica with as clean a democratic slate as any non-western country ever had, even having given us guided lessons on choosing our leaders from 1944 to 1962. And almost none of the factors that have caused so many newly emerged democracies to fail were present in Jamaica. One of the fortunate few places completely untouched by war in the 20^th century, this island had no tradition of a politically active military. Furthermore we all spoke the same language and there were no ethnic or racial divisions. In short there was nothing to distract independent Jamaicans from devoting all their energies to governing themselves.

So whether we like it or not, the political system Jamaica has today is one which the people have chosen. Garrison politics, party linked patronage, and rum and curry goat vote buying would not exist if a significant portion of the populace had not given them their stamp of approval and even more accepted them with indifference.

Jamaicans love to complain that ‘politicians mash up the country’. But our parliamentarians did not magically descended from the sky to rule over us. However cynical, dishonest and power hungry our elected officials, they have all been chosen from the people by the people. As Mutty Perkins keeps reminding us, political candidate Erasmus Campbell promised the people only honesty, told those looking for hand outs to vote for someone else, and was soundly defeated at the polls.

Yet for all the political ills that plague us, Jamaicans have not done too bad a job of running our own show. Since becoming independent in 1962 we have held regular multi-party elections, remained assassination free, suffered no serious uprisings, adhered to the rule of law, and maintained a free press. Not 20 countries of over a million people can make the same collective claim. If you accept Sir Karl Popper’s definition of democracy as “the type of government which can be removed without violence” Jamaica is unquestionably one of the world’s great democratic successes.

Certainly there is no country on earth where people voice their opinions more freely. Indeed the democratic ethos is so ingrained here that many Jamaicans seem to assume that the freedoms we take for granted exist everywhere. Look at the curious admiration some public commentators have for press censoring states like Cuba and Singapore. Yet only last year Cuba jailed a number of people for openly criticizing the government’s economic policies. And admirable as its economic success may be, Singapore is a country where the government uses the libel laws to bankrupt and silence opponents, regularly suing opposition politicians on the basis of their election addresses and never losing a case.

But democratically stable and free as Jamaica may be, a country whose average per capita income is less than a third of the world average and which has one of the planet’s highest murder rates cannot be counted a true success. And many commentators claim Jamaica is in a political crisis, charging that our cynical and corrupt politicians have alienated the populace and undermined the public’s confidence in our governmental system. Some go even further and call Jamaica a pseudo-democracy, in which the opposition is complicit in the raping of the country. The system, they say, is utterly rotten and on the verge of collapse. But is our political setup really the root of our problems?

To be sure the PNP administration of the past eleven years has a truly dismal record – since 1989 per capita income has grown by less than one percent a year, the Jamaican dollar has lost over 85% of its value against its US counterpart, and the murder rate has doubled. But over the same period the official opposition JLP has proven to be so disorganized and short of new ideas and competent managers that few are convinced it can do a better job. If you can’t run a party, how can you expect people to trust you to run a country?

The NDM was supposed to be new and different but has failed to offer Jamaicans anything like a coherent message. Bruce Golding claims that the many people who think the NDM espouses an American presidential model are mistaken. But whose fault is that? The main priority of any new entity should be to clearly articulate to the public exactly what it represents. And the NDM, by its president’s own admission, has failed miserably in this very basic task. Who is going to vote for a party which can’t even tell you what it stands for?

Yet choosing the lesser of two or three evils is the situation most democracies find themselves in most of the time. After all Churchills and Roosevelts or even Bustamantes and Norman Manleys do not come along every day. People everywhere love to compare the present to a mythically perfect past and nearly every country grumbles about the quality of its current leaders – British and American commentators talk as if Blair, Hague, Bush and Gore are all bumbling incompetents. But an electorate faced with unappetizing alternatives can always decide to give none of them overwhelming power and hope that the spur of competition will produce decent government. This is what most successful countries usually do.

And if voters are completely turned off all the main political parties, they have the option of electing independent parliamentarians. Indeed some truly independent voices in parliament might be just the invigorating infusion the Jamaican political system needs. But in the 1997 general elections independent candidates garnered only 885 votes or .12% of the total ballots cast. Who can take Jamaicans’ endless complaining about the main political parties seriously when they keep voting for them like mindless Pavlovian robots?

H. L. Mencken claimed that the only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Yet for all their constant moaning and groaning only 48% of Jamaicans 18 and over bothered to both register and vote in 1997. Jamaica may be mired in crime and poverty, but it is difficult to feel sorry for a country where the majority of the populace is too lazy or stupid to exercise its democratic rights. If people have the power to change their situation and don’t, is it not reasonable to conclude that they are content with their lot?  changkob@hotmail.com