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Ken Chaplin
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
General elections will be held on August 27 and a great deal of vote-buying is taking place. However, electors should not allow bribery to influence their intention to vote for the candidate or party of their choice. Vote-buying has been one of the undesirable features of the electoral process and a threat to honest, free and fair elections.
Ken Chaplin
In the first general elections under Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944 and in the elections of 1949, 1955 and 1962 vote-buying was not a problem. Rather, it was white rum and curried goat, among other things, that were used to bribe electors. Vote-buying began in earnest in the 1967 general elections and became intense over the years. Today, politicians are offering between $2,000 and $5,000 per vote depending on the expected closeness of the race.
Of course, Jamaican electors are no fools. Some accept a bribe and when they go behind the screens they cast their vote for the candidate they originally intended to vote for. I understand, for example, that a lot of money was offered by adherents of Peter Phillips and Omar Davies and accepted by some delegates of the PNP to back these two officials in the party's presidential election against Portia Simpson Miller, but some delegates accepted the money and voted instead for Simpson Miller.
Electors have to be careful for whom they vote in the coming general elections. The practice of politicians handing out money to electors has got to stop and there should be a law against it. What people in Jamaica want at this time is mostly employment.
I have reason to believe that politicians have been playing a game of keeping young people in inner cities and rural communities in poverty, so that they can control them. That is the impression I got from working and playing in the ghettos for more than 40 years, and I have written about this situation in this column a few times. Against this background, I find significant the statement by a group of young people in the Sunday Gleaner of July 8 that politicians are skirting the real issues affecting young people in the election campaign because they know that a large section of the electorate is uneducated.
The biggest problem facing young people in Jamaica is unemployment. This is unfortunate because people are the country's richest resource, but it is being wasted. Drive on any main road passing any inner-city community in urban areas and look up or down the side streets and lanes or any rural village during working and school hours and you will see large numbers of idlers holding their corners. The country has failed to provide productive ventures, employment, skill training, basic education and literacy classes for thousands of young people. Some day politicians will have to give an account for this waste of human resources.
I have frequently remembered an incident in the 1970s when a group of young people in Trench Town formed an organisation called "Youth for Social Change". They grew cash crops and were doing quite well selling their produce to supermarkets. So impressed was I that I left my home in Stony Hill on Sunday mornings and journeyed down to Trench Town to assist them. They had an inspiring leader in Neville Howell. Apparently, however, they were showing too much independence from politicians and dons. One day a group of socialist gunmen went to the farm and destroyed it and chased the members of "Youth for Social Change" from the community.
Many of today's youth suffering in inner-city communities and rural villages saw their grandparents and parents living in poverty, and now find themselves living under similar conditions. Is there no way out? This is what the late Professor George Beckford meant when he wrote about persistent poverty. The state has not done enough.
There is clear and potential danger for the country if we allow the large number of young people to drift towards the edge of darkness. The present government has been in office for more than 18 years - longer consecutively than any other government - but has dropped the ball in pursuing the change that is necessary and crucial.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
General elections will be held on August 27 and a great deal of vote-buying is taking place. However, electors should not allow bribery to influence their intention to vote for the candidate or party of their choice. Vote-buying has been one of the undesirable features of the electoral process and a threat to honest, free and fair elections.
Ken Chaplin
In the first general elections under Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944 and in the elections of 1949, 1955 and 1962 vote-buying was not a problem. Rather, it was white rum and curried goat, among other things, that were used to bribe electors. Vote-buying began in earnest in the 1967 general elections and became intense over the years. Today, politicians are offering between $2,000 and $5,000 per vote depending on the expected closeness of the race.
Of course, Jamaican electors are no fools. Some accept a bribe and when they go behind the screens they cast their vote for the candidate they originally intended to vote for. I understand, for example, that a lot of money was offered by adherents of Peter Phillips and Omar Davies and accepted by some delegates of the PNP to back these two officials in the party's presidential election against Portia Simpson Miller, but some delegates accepted the money and voted instead for Simpson Miller.
Electors have to be careful for whom they vote in the coming general elections. The practice of politicians handing out money to electors has got to stop and there should be a law against it. What people in Jamaica want at this time is mostly employment.
I have reason to believe that politicians have been playing a game of keeping young people in inner cities and rural communities in poverty, so that they can control them. That is the impression I got from working and playing in the ghettos for more than 40 years, and I have written about this situation in this column a few times. Against this background, I find significant the statement by a group of young people in the Sunday Gleaner of July 8 that politicians are skirting the real issues affecting young people in the election campaign because they know that a large section of the electorate is uneducated.
The biggest problem facing young people in Jamaica is unemployment. This is unfortunate because people are the country's richest resource, but it is being wasted. Drive on any main road passing any inner-city community in urban areas and look up or down the side streets and lanes or any rural village during working and school hours and you will see large numbers of idlers holding their corners. The country has failed to provide productive ventures, employment, skill training, basic education and literacy classes for thousands of young people. Some day politicians will have to give an account for this waste of human resources.
I have frequently remembered an incident in the 1970s when a group of young people in Trench Town formed an organisation called "Youth for Social Change". They grew cash crops and were doing quite well selling their produce to supermarkets. So impressed was I that I left my home in Stony Hill on Sunday mornings and journeyed down to Trench Town to assist them. They had an inspiring leader in Neville Howell. Apparently, however, they were showing too much independence from politicians and dons. One day a group of socialist gunmen went to the farm and destroyed it and chased the members of "Youth for Social Change" from the community.
Many of today's youth suffering in inner-city communities and rural villages saw their grandparents and parents living in poverty, and now find themselves living under similar conditions. Is there no way out? This is what the late Professor George Beckford meant when he wrote about persistent poverty. The state has not done enough.
There is clear and potential danger for the country if we allow the large number of young people to drift towards the edge of darkness. The present government has been in office for more than 18 years - longer consecutively than any other government - but has dropped the ball in pursuing the change that is necessary and crucial.