Editorial | Lesson for the United States, Brazil

Two events in other places this week were raw reminders that for all of its failings, there are important things about Jamaica that are worthy of celebration.

Not least of these is the island’s democracy and adherence to the behaviours that are necessary for the system to work.

On September 3, Jamaicans, albeit a minority of the electorate, voted in an election that returned Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his Jamaica Labour Party to government for a third consecutive five-year term.

The campaign was robust. Many harsh things were said by both major parties, but the process was generally peaceful. Freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, was honoured.

And while there have been complaints by the Opposition about aspects of how the election was conducted, results have been respected.

Jamaica’s situation stands in sharp contrast to the developments in the United States, which used to be paraded as the poster child of democratic ideals; and in Brazil, whose efforts in recent decades of recapturing democracy have been under threat.

On Wednesday, Charlie Kirk, 31, the founder of provocative far-right, Donald Trump-supporting youth organisation, Turning Point USA, was shot dead by a sniper on a university campus in the state of Utah, while addressing a function.

The following day, Brazil’s Supreme Court, in a 4-1 majority, convicted the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, 70, and seven of his close allies, for conspiring to foment a coup, and assassinate the country’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after Mr Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid in 2022. The former president was sentenced to 27 years and three months in priso.

Among others sent to prison were Mr Bolsonaro’s defence and justice ministers, General Walter Bragga Netto and Ander Torres, as well as his former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid.

NOT NEW

Political violence, of course, is not new to the United States. Indeed, the country’s failure to end slavery via dialogue resulted in a bloody civil war to hold the union together. Sitting presidents and senior politicians have been assassinated during America’s nearly two-and-half centuries of independence.

But in recent decades, a deepening polarisation of the country’s politics, exemplified by the rise of President Trump and his ethno-nationalist (primarily white) Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, has strengthened the embrace of violence as a legitimate tool of political discourse.

For instance, a poll published last week found that 34 per cent of students on American university campuses felt that it was acceptable, in some cases, to use violent methods to disrupt speeches. Five years ago, it was 20 per cent. Fifty-four per cent said it was tolerable to prevent other students from attending speeches.

More broadly, though, while 72 per cent of Americans polled after Mr Kirk’s murder said violence was never justified as part of political discourse, 11 per cent agreed it might, at times, be justified to reach political goals.

In this polarised America, which Mr Trump, a Republican, helped to energise, the president himself was twice the target of assassination attempts while campaigning for the job. In one attempt, he was nicked on an ear by the would-be assassin’s bullet.

Others were not so lucky.

In June, Melissa Hortman, the Democratic Speaker of the Minnesota State Legislature, and her husband, were shot dead by an apparently politically motivated gunman. Another Democratic State Representative, John Hoffman, and his wife were shot and injured by the same gunman in a separate incident.

Given Mr Kirk’s often incendiary and racist statements, including his penchant for belittling the worth of major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr, there might be a constituency willing to rationalise his assassination and his contribution thereto. That would be wrong.

This newspaper appreciates that in certain socio-historical contexts, some kinds of speech may be limited by law. The denial of the Holocaust in some European countries is an example.

EXTREMELY LIMITED

However, The Gleaner is clear that such restrictions, if they are at all allowed, must be extremely limited, with a high bar for proof of such offences.

A critical foundation of democracy is the right of its adherents to hold and exchange ideas – to engage in debates and to convince others of their points of view. Bigots are best defeated by ideas and arguments. Which is the environment in which democracy thrives.

Jamaica, happily, has held onto these principles over more than 80 years of universal adult suffrage and 19 general elections. Which is not to say that the island’s institutions of democracy haven’t, at times, become frayed, warped or bent. They, however, never broke.

Indeed, at the most perilous periods, when these systems were most stressed, leaders’ commitment to democracy prevailed, causing retreats from the precipice.

In 1980, Jamaica was close to a civil war. More than 800 people were killed, the majority in politically related violence. But elections were held and, unlike Mr Bolsonaro’s coup plot and his plan to kill Lula, there was a peaceful transfer of power.

Brazil, with 15 coups or coup attempts (including 21 years of military rule up to 1985) since the 1889 fall of the monarchy, might learn a thing or two from Jamaica. As might the United States, where Mr Trump’s supporters attempted an insurrection in 2020 to prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Democracy thrives on tolerance and debate and a willingness to accept electoral defeat. The will of the people must prevail.