Jamaica Politicians Discover Power of the Internet
KINGSTON, Jamaica _ The video clip catches Jamaica Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller in a “Howard Dean moment” _ shrieking, shaking her head, frantically beating her chest and finally shouting “Don’t draw mi tongue!”
A loose translation of her warning in Jamaican patois to the opposition Jamaica Labor Party: “Don’t provoke me into getting really personal.”
The video is just one of the ways that Jamaican politicians are using the Internet for the first time in the run-up to general elections Monday. Candidates on both sides also have posted their profiles on MySpace, Facebook and the hi5 social networking sites.
But the 5-year-old clip of Simpson-Miller, posted on YouTube.com earlier this month by the JLP, has quickly become one of the most-watched videos on the YouTube.
It has already garnered 32,000 views, and it was ranked among YouTube’s top 10 most-viewed videos after getting 2,000 hits under the news and politics category in the one-day period after its posting.
Its popularity signals the arrival of the Internet in Jamaica’s political sphere, and shows how some young Jamaicans _ long chided for political apathy _ are trying to influence the balloting by utilizing the digital domain to win votes for the opposition JLP.
“Any avenue you can use to appeal to these voters, that is a means,” said Trevor Forrest, 34, webmaster of the JLP’s Web site and one of the architects of the party’s hard-hitting Internet campaign. “Right now the mere fact that we have attacked the Internet has given us the advantage in appealing to those people.”
The focus on the Web here is not just Internet-savvy Jamaicans between the ages of 18 and 35, Forrest said, but also Jamaicans living abroad who can log on and influence family and friends here in the close contest pitting Simpson-Miller’s ruling People’s National Party against the JLP.
Simpson-Miller, who last year became the first woman to rule Jamaica after former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson retired, is seeking to lead the PNP to an unprecedented fifth consecutive term in power and in the process win her own mandate from the country’s 1.3 million registered voters.
Seemingly caught off guard by the JLP’s Internet campaign, PNP supporters have accused the opposition of playing dirty.
“They try to demonize me. I will not dignify it with a response,” a near-hoarse Simpson-Miller told a recent political rally, referring to the JLP’s Internet campaign advertisements and the infamous clip from a 2002 rally.
“They doctored the tape. And they do all kinds of things to the tape; they speed up the tape to give the wrong impression,” said K.D. Knight, former foreign minister and one of the PNP leaders shown on the attack ads.
Though the PNP has sought to counter the JLP’s Internet campaign by creating MySpace and hi5 profiles for some of its own candidates, and launching eight of its campaign ads on its newly YouTube channel Friday, political observers here say the JLP has clearly won the Internet battle.
“The JLP has been using the Internet quite successfully,” said Richard Crawford, a political science professor at the University of the West Indies Mona Campus in Jamaica. “The battle is on for those young voters.”
To date, the JLP has launched 21 videos on its website in conjunction with its YouTube Channel.
Jamaicans aren’t just logging onto the political party Web sites. The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, which first launched an election site during the last election five years ago, said its election blog is generating a lot of traffic.
“The response has been incredible,” said Marlene Davis, managing director of Gleaner Online. “You can see the types of comments, the interaction in the forum. It’s been very, very well-received.”
Case in point: an item posted weeks ago on the newspaper’s wwww.jamaicaelections.com is still getting comments _ 253 and counting.
“The discussion online is incredible,” Davis said. “The blogs give us the ability to talk about the political climate in a way that print is unable to do because it’s limited to the actual page.”
Forrest, the JLP’s webmaster, believes that win or lose the JLP’s Internet campaign has forever transformed how political campaigns are run in the English-speaking Caribbean.
“Some people will sit up and take notice from now on,” he said.
As for Simpson-Miller’s shrieking video, Forrest makes no apologizes. He’s hoping it will have the same effect that Howard Dean’s scream did in 2004 _ from Democratic presidential hopeful to hopeless.
“All the facets are being attacked and exploited,” Forrest said. “At the end of the day, the goal is to win.”
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