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The Portia factor
Published in the Jamaica Gleaner : Wednesday | September 5, 2007
Peter Espeut
Actually, what people call 'The Portia Factor' is not really about Portia Simpson Miller personally, but about what people feel Portia wants to do for them. Neither party has really understood 'The Portia Factor' or they would have made better use of it in their campaigns.
The vast majority of Jamaicans are poor and black and dispossessed - and they know it. They know that in the 21st century in this post-slave society, they continue to be disadvantaged; they are offered sub-standard education, and menial low-paying jobs as their best option in life.
No one has to tell Jamaicans this; he/she who feels it, knows it! Remember, Jamaica is the land of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, creators of the ultimate protest music. Reggae and Rasta were born in Jamaica as profound protest against dispossession, and as real rejection of the status quo; particularly Jamaica's official version of Christianity which reinforces the status quo rather than preaches good news to the poor. Pentecostalism has supplanted mainstream Christian denominations (including the Baptist Church) in the hearts and minds of the majority of Jamaicans because Pentecostalism is spiritual protest against the social evils woven into the very fabric of Jamaican society.
As a nation Jamaica has never been organised for the advancement of the majority, but for the benefit of the few. Nothing better exemplifies this than our politics, which has deepened poverty, educational inequality, class divisions and dispossession from the colonial period until today.
Hope
In Portia many poor, dispossessed black Jamaicans - reasonably or unreasonably - saw a way forward. As a black woman from the bowels of the working class, Portia seemed able to show the way out of the wilderness in which Jamaicans had been wandering for over 40 years of 'Independence'. Portia electrified more PNP delegates than anyone else to turf out Peter Phillips and Omar Davies in the PNP leadership race and become Prime Minister despite little support from Cabinet ministers or MPs. This was not because she was the best leader or the best debater, but because she was their best hope, nay their only hope (to quote P.J. Patterson). And it seemed she would even electrify dispossessed JLP supporters from the underclass to give the PNP a fifth term.
The strategists in the PNP completely misread the situation; they thought her popularity was personal, and pushed her to the front: "Vote for Portia and the PNP". Portia was politically popular not because she is a nice lady (which apparently she genuinely is), but because like other political messiahs in our history (e.g. Marcus Garvey and Michael Manley) she promised a new day.
Little promise
Once she got the job, Portia showed little promise she would deliver the goods. She had more-or-less the same Cabinet, and followed the same economic model as before; the same old faces implemented the same old policies. Her constituency remained as poor as ever. She announced no new vision, no new strategic direction. People soon realised that their dream was only an illusion. She quickly lost support.
If the PNP really understood 'The Portia Factor' its essence would be all over their manifesto and campaign ads; but their heads were buried in the shifting sands of the old politics; they thought her popularity was 'secular' - akin to but deeper than the popularity of a Peter Phillips or a Bruce Golding; but her popularity was not so much personal as metaphysical: the dispossessed looked to Portia to liberate them from captivity.
If the JLP really understood 'The Portia Factor' they could have adapted it to their purposes. The 'change' the JLP called for was again a 'secular' change, different faces doing the same things the PNP did, but better. The JLP, still perceived to be the party of the 'big man', is not perceived to be promising change in the 'being' and status of poor Jamaicans.
Elections are over for the time being, and even though now disconnected from her, 'The Portia Factor' is still out there, waiting to be possessed by a new leader who will electrify the dispossessed.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.
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