LAST WEEK, I stated that neither the PNP nor the JLP care much for the environment, and my colleague, Dawn Ritch, is offended. The headline of her piece last Sunday was "Balance the issues dear Peter". It's all right if I criticise the PNP; that is balanced; it is when I include the JLP in my criticism that I become "unbalanced". She believes that to say "nothing had been done in the decade of the 80s' is PNP strategy, and I agree; just as to say that nothing good has been done in the 70s and 90s is JLP strategy.

Of course, I have said neither. I have criticised both PNP and JLP for tribalising Jamaica: for corruption, for their garrisons, for promoting violence especially as a route to parliamentary power, and for their blood-stained hands.

But my colleague columnist abhors this; "the perverse thinking in the world of Jamaican journalism is that one can make the most outlandish statements as long as one is careful to accuse both parties of it". Better, I suppose, to lionise one side and demonise the other.

A tribalised Jamaican is one who sees events through orange - or green-coloured glasses. These glasses are really blinkers; they prevent the viewer from seeing the big picture. They believe their eyes are clear, but they see logs in the eyes of others. Tribalisation creates bad memories; it allows PNP supporters to crow about "Solid Achievements" but not see substandard education and JLP supporters to claim no environmental malfeasance in the 1980s. Tribalisation is well-advanced in Jamaica; we now see it clearly in the media, in the music, and in the church. We are going backward fast!

Last Sunday, Dawn bet me J$100 that I can't come up with "credible evidence" of the JLP's poor environmental record in the 1980s. It is an easy bet to win; Dawn must know that, for she has only risked J$100; she is not confident of victory. Space will only allow me to give two examples, because today I really want to say something about polling and pollsters.

Conservation of the environment requires regulation and enforcement. In 1983, the JLP government did not reappoint the boards of the Wildlife Protection Authority (administering the Wildlife Protection Act), the Watershed Protection Commission (enforcing the Watershed Protection Act) and the Beach Control Authority (administering the Beach Control Act) causing their portfolios to languish. What resulted was an environmental free-for-all. The bird-shooters had a field day! Deforestation advanced. Many beaches were divested; places like Jackson's Bay Beach have not recovered to this day.

Although they did not create the Forest Industry Development Company (FIDCO), the JLP in the 1980s accelerated their work. Jamaica would earn foreign exchange from a lumber industry, and Caribbean Pine was selected as the premier timber tree. In the 1980s, FIDCO devastated the natural forests of Jamaica to plant pine. They tore unsuitable roads through the forests areas, doing untold damage. They gave access to coal-burners and other stealers of forest products, and caused tremendous soil erosion. I myself witnessed the levelling of forests in the Portland Blue Mountains down to bare earth, and the planting of pine seedlings. Soil erosion caused many rivers to run brown with even light rain. And then hurricane Gilbert snapped the pine trees like toothpicks, and the project was abandoned.

All this caused Jamaica to enter the record books as having one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world!

Earlier this year, Mr. Patterson tried to build for himself a record as an environmentalist, aided and abetted by a colleague of his in the media. My colleague is now endeavouring to paint Mr. Seaga in a similar light. It is deeds, not words, that count in this arena, and both fall far short of the mark. Not even in the arena of words do they do well. When last have you heard any spokesperson on the environment from any party say anything about conservation, deforestation, overfishing, sewage pollution, the covering of the face of Jamaica with plastic, the restoration of Kingston Harbour, the reduction of the bird population, the drying up of rivers, the erosion of beaches, the destruction of mangroves and coral reefs, or whatever?

I have been told to my face by more than one politician that since public opinion polls do not point to the environment as a priority issue, they would make no time for it. This is why the burden of my piece last week was that it is we environmentalists who have failed, because we have not persuaded the general public to take on these issues as priorities. We have to work harder to force the environment on to the national political agenda.

POLITICAL POLLS

The only quarrel I ever had with the late Professor Carl Stone was when I suggested that his polls did not just reflect public opinion, but actually helped to form it. My suggestion was that the publication of polls indicating victory for one side could discourage supporters of the other side from voting making the poll a self-fulfilling prophecy. It could even demoralise the runner-up party and cause them to reduce their efforts, thus favouring the poll-leader. To this day, I can't understand why Carl took such strong umbrage at my suggestion. He raised his voice and was adamant that his polls only reflected opinion, and did not create it.

Many believe that polls create public opinion in even more substantial ways, especially in the Jamaican context of tribalism and patronage. If supporting the winner means that I become a candidate for scarce benefits and spoils, then if the polls declare which party will win and I want political favours, then I might get on the bandwagon and vote for the sure winner. And even without the patronage, humans are social animals and like to follow crowds.

It is for this reason that political polling has itself become political. In 1980 when Stone's poll foretold a JLP victory, another poll was commissioned which predicted a PNP victory. Today, much more subtle tactics are at work. Why if there are two political opinion polls declaring that the PNP is winning, does the PNP have to employ their own pollster - a foreigner? Don't they trust the local pollsters? Should we?

The methods that Carl Stone used (as he explained them to me) were not "scientific" in the strict sense of the word. He did not use "random sampling" or "stratified random sampling" or "scientific sampling" to determine who he interviewed. He analysed how each and every polling division has voted since the first General Election of 1944, and identified the PDs which showed a swing to the winning party. However, those PDs voted, the whole constituencies voted, and he only surveyed these swing PDs. This method worked for him, and he always got it more-or-less right, and he thumbed his nose at the purist critics of his "unscientific" methods.

How the margin of error (always said to be plus or minus three per cent) can be reliably calculated using this idiosyncratic method, I have never been able to discover. With internal migration and the growing garrisonisation of Jamaica, the number of these swing PDs must be shrinking. But if publication of the polls influences public opinion, we may never know how reliable this method of polling really is.