Staff writer - Nyasha Watson
Primes Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness , has called the election and the scheduled date is December 29, 2011. Thus, this date is two days after our festive season and three days before our New Year’s celebration. In essence the date is sandwiched between two major holidays.
Therefore, the question on small business people’s mind is, why? This is the season that they make the most profit and our election is sometimes marred by political unrest. They are fearful that they will not make as much profit because their prospective customers will remain in their homes.
However, in defense of the Prime Minister this was the only practical date to have called the election if it was to be held in 2011. He did the politically correct thing and wait until the new voter’s list was released before he called the date. Some will say what about next year.
Well, next year is scheduled to be a big year for Jamaica, because we will be celebrating our 50th year of independence. Thus an election would have disrupted our celebrations.
Now what does a Christmas election means for us? Firstly, I think we are creating history because we are going to be the first country to hold an election so close to Christmas day. Secondly, it means that the elections will overshadow our Christmas celebration.
I will not even argue about the religious aspect of Christmas. This is so because apart from the controversy where December 25 is not Jesus’ birthday but the date of a pagan festival. It has long been accepted that it is more a commercial event than one where we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, it certainly will be an inconvenience for most people. I mean a lot of parties have already been cancelled.
This brings me to my point. When Bruce Golding was Prime Minister, he was advocating for a fixed election date. However, due to certain technicalities this was never materialized. Thus, I am saying to next party that forms government that they must institute a fixed election date, so as to avoid future inconvenience like this.
In North America, they have a fixed election date and we are known to import everything from North America. Fix the election date to avoid another Christmas election!
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