BBCCaribbean.com | Jamaica elections: 'soon come'

On 27th August Jamaica's Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was due to face her first major political test in the general elections.

Then Hurricane Dean arrived .. battering the southern coast of the island and forcing people to flee their homes.
A state of emergency was declared and the elections postponed.

Orin Gordon who's in Kingston says that the Prime Minister may well be glad of the delay.

There's a Jamaican expression, "soon come". It means I'll be with you shortly. As is often the case though, soon come can mean you're in for long wait.

Some Jamaicans find irritating the portrait of their country as one that has a different relationship with timekeeping than most others. Business people I have come across hate it, and one I'd arranged to meet for an interview made a point of telling me that I was a couple of minutes late.

But as a Jamaican friend said to me, there is some truth in the 'soon come' mentality. How else do you explain the long wait for the announcement of a new date for the general election.

The poll had been scheduled for Monday, August 27th. Hurricane Dean's arrival a week before pretty much wrecked those plans. Buildings, including polling centres were destroyed or damaged. Blackouts were widespread, as the hurricane brought down power lines. The conditions simply weren't right for holding an election.

The country was told on Tuesday that the Governor-General would likely announce a new date, later that day. Nothing happened.

As a Jamaican friend said to me, there is some truth in the 'soon come' mentality. How else do you explain the long wait for the announcement of a new date for the general election.

Orin Gordon, BBC News

On Wednesday we were all whipped into a frenzy.
The Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, had an important announcement to make at 8 o' clock that night. 8 came and went, 9, 9.30. Regular updates from an increasingly tired radio announcer kept telling us that the broadcast has been delayed.

At 10 o'clock, the Prime Minister came on the air. She announced a package of relief measures: cash payouts to families, mortgage concessions, emergency aid for farmers.

The deeply religious Prime Minister offered up prayers and thanks that the hurricane spared Jamaica a direct hit, said thank you and good night.

Meantime about 160 kilometres west of the capital Kingston, along the island's south coast, some of the people I met couldn't care less about an election right now.

Many of the communities in this mostly rural part of Jamaica had taken a big hit from the hurricane. One in every ten houses was completely destroyed. A number had roofs blown off, leaving people inside at the mercy of the heavy downpours that accompanied the scarily strong winds.

In a village called Mount Prospect three generations of Nicola's family lived in a modest 3 bedroom house. Everything was soaked. Days after the hurricane, the mattresses were still wet.

The house had a strong smell of damp. Nicola, her mother, sister and 3 children are scattered, living in other peoples' homes. She shows me the damage, telling me she's lost everything to the rain. I don't even have one pair of shoes to wear to work , she says.

Like many I've come across in Jamaica, she cares about her politics, and can speak very authoritatively on the merits of the candidates. But right now, she, her family and others are focussed on how they'll survive the next week without shelter or drinking water.

Jamaica is a lush green island. It's big by Caribbean standards, and its 2 million plus population is the largest in the English speaking part of the region. The north of the island is the rich touristy part, the south coast, apart from the capital Kingston, is not as well developed. And it's the south and the east that got the worse of the hurricane.

Yet, despite the misery that the hurricane brought to thousands of Jamaicans, it HAS presented the Prime Minister with a political opportunity. Portia Simpson Miller had been losing ground in the polls to her rival, the opposition leader Bruce Golding.

Most analysts reckoned she'd performed dismally in a couple of televised head to head debates against him. The polls suggested that people had less trust in her and her governing People's National Party, because of a controversial donation to the party from a foreign investor.

It's a story that ran for months in Jamaica, and raised questions about openness and trust in the government. In the end the party gave the money back. That issue hurt her as did her performance in the debates.

Even supporters of the Prime Minister acknowledge she's not a great public speaker. When she was running for the leadership of her party 18 months ago, a supporter of her main rival publicly ridiculed her intelligence.
It prompted her husband to take the unusual step of phoning up a radio talk show to defend her.

What she is though is a formidable campaigner, and when she's on the stump and speaking to her audience in the local vernacular, few politicians in Jamaica can match her.

That connection to the people should serve her well in this period of rebuilding from the hurricane. She's a savvy political operator, and will not miss this opportunity. Portia Simpson Miller has been underestimated before, and it would be unwise to do so again.

The hurricane did cause some shift in the physical landscape. Will it alter the political one as well?' Soon know.