Talked to my mom this morning to commiserate with her since her party just lost control in Jamaica after 18 years of power. The PNP (the People’s National Party), like the Democrats, got much too complacent and let the JLP (Jamaica Labor Party) come on strong and energized.
You know, from that article, I couldn’t figure out a single debated issue, not even bullshit issues like ANWR drilling is here. Wikipedia totally lacked coverage of the election, which surprised me since Jamaica speaks English, mon.
Yeah, I should have maybe written about it more even though my knowledge is just surface and tainted because my filter is my partisan mom. But in a nutshell, the PNP is the Dems and the JLP is the GOP, although in a country like Jamaica the JLP is not a very conservative party. You can’t have “trickle down” economics voodoo in a country of mostly poor people. But what happened is the JLP outspent the PNP something like 10 to 1. $5million US in ads versus $400,000 is a lot in a country of only about 2.6 million. My mom thinks that the JLP has set itself up to fail because they’ve promised free health care and education to everyone but there’s no way for Jamaica to actually pay for something like that. (I mean, according to Wikipedia the per capita GDP is $4,300 vs $43,000 for us and we don’t have universal care — yet).
The PNP is a lot like the Dems from the 1970s-2006. Complacent and satisfied with their power, they get dumb and lazy and unprepared for the opposition to revitalize itself. Its the closest election in Jamaican history though, so the room for error is tiny as hell.