Jamaican politics is a tribal thing. It always has been. This is in no small part due to our size and the domination of only two political parties since the people gained the right to both vote and self-governance.
Many are the tales of people from as far back as the 1940s, who can recall being labelled a Labourite or a Comrade due to their simple questioning of the party line. While this has always existed, while the tribal lines have always been drawn and maintained by tribalists, there has historically been a space for dissenting voices — whether they are taken on board by those in power is a different matter — and even a grudging dose of respect from those in power as they realise, eventually, that surrounding oneself with yes-men is a recipie for disaster.
Something, however, has changed and, if we are to be honest with ourselves, the change happened right around the time that the previous administration was dishing out the bitter fiscal medicine, much to the acclaim of those in positions of power. What has changed is that the room for dissent is rapidly shrinking and people — beginning with politicians and their cronies — are now painting dissenters as not only opposition supporters but in thinly veiled ways as enemies of the state, or rather, people who wish to see criminality prosper and who have no wish to see the nation and its people attain prosperity.
Such a move, not simply labelling dissenters as opposition supporters, but as people who wish to see the nation fall prey to criminal elements and see its people fail, smacks of nothing more than authoritarianism, and that is a road which this administration — and quite frankly the opposition based on prior behaviour — seem more than happy to take us into…
jamaicachange 