Francesca Tavares | Any centrists left?

Are there any centrists left in Jamaica? In the world? I've been looking. They seem to have gone quiet, the way sensible people do at a loud party.

I should say where I stand. I lean a little right of centre. I believe in free markets, church, and a government that lives within its means, whilst encouraging innovation and enterprise without unjustifiable overreach on civil liberties.

I also believe in strong policies that support families; a sustainable social safety net that empowers the poor and the most vulnerable; clear accountability and transparency; equality before the law for rich and poor alike, favouring neither; and compassionate, truthful policies that heal long-standing injustices and pave the way from poverty to a decent living.

I have also learned from my study of history that any side, handed over to its most extreme voices, can wreck a country. In my view, our safety is in the stubborn nuanced middle.

IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

History has not been kind to extremes, on either side.

The far right gave us Mussolini's fascism and Pinochet's disappeared. The far left has a longer list than its admirers like to admit. Hitler's National Socialists, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China differed in their slogans and agreed in their methods: the secret police, the camp and the cult of the leader. Mao's Great Leap Forward starved tens of millions. Venezuela, once among the richest countries in Latin America, has watched close to eight million of its people leave. Even America's comfortable campuses produced the Weathermen, who bombed the US Capitol in 1971.

Ideas have consequences. When either side lets its most extreme voices take the wheel, ordinary people end up in the ditch.

WATCH THE PENDULUM

Brazil is a cautionary tale. In January 2023, a week after Lula took office, crowds of Jair Bolsonaro's supporters broke into and vandalised the Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace in Brasília.

The Supreme Court later convicted Bolsonaro of plotting a coup, a charge he denies. The court's critics, at home and abroad, say it has long leaned toward Lula and against his opponents, and in 2025 Washington went as far as sanctioning Justice Alexandre de Moraes over what it called censorship and politicised prosecutions.

This month his eldest son, Flávio, lost a bitter presidential runoff to the leftist Lula da Silva, a man who was himself convicted of corruption and spent 580 days in prison before the same Supreme Court annulled his convictions on procedural grounds in 2021, clearing his path back to the presidency.

Flávio at first refused to accept the result. Within days a Supreme Court justice ordered him to hand over his passports in a money-laundering probe, and when he missed the deadline they were cancelled. He calls it persecution; his accusers call it the law. Either way, Brazil has reached the point where losing an election can cost you your freedom to travel, and where every court ruling is read as a party move. Somewhere along the way, rivals became enemies, and enemies, apparently, belong in jail.

Latin America has seen this film before. From Havana to Caracas to Managua, revolutions promised justice and delivered strongmen, and coups and corruption have stained left and right alike. I am not in the "¡Viva la revolución!" camp. In my view, nations benefit most from stability, and from slow, deliberate change for the better.

France is burning. On October 17, protests over the cost of living turned into riots. Limoges' 143-year-old town hall was set ablaze, thousands of shops were looted, a police officer was killed and well over a thousand people were arrested in a single day. Its far left and far right have risen together, each the other's best recruiting poster, and the parliament they share can barely keep a government standing long enough to learn the ministers' names.

In the United States, it has turned violent. Donald Trump has survived three attempts on his life since July 2024: at a Pennsylvania rally, at his Florida golf club and, this April, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Charlie Kirk was shot dead on a university stage. A Minnesota legislator and her husband were murdered in their own home. Two parties now speak to two Americas, and neither seems to hear the other.

In my opinion, the extremes never cancel each other out. They feed each other, and the country pays for the meal.

(And for those thinking that encouraging their side's extremists will see them back in power: you may be unpleasantly surprised to discover at the end, a party that has abandoned sound reason – and quite possibly you. Check the footnotes of history.)

NINETY MILES FROM FLORIDA

Closer to home, Cuba shows what a lifetime at one end of the pendulum looks like. Before last week's vote at the United Nations, a group of former CARICOM heads of government wrote an open letter calling the US embargo "the law of the jungle" and assuring us that Cuba "is not a threat to any nation or any person on planet Earth".

Tell that to Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente. Anna is 21, a Christian content creator in Havana. In March her mother filmed a plainclothes State Security agent serving a summons at their front door, and Anna posted the video. On October 1, a Havana court sentenced both women to two years of "limited freedom", convertible to prison if they fail to "respect the norms of socialist coexistence". Not one word about her appeared in our former leaders' letter.

Cuba's hunger is older than this year's sanctions. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Havana lost its patron, and in the Special Period of the 1990s the economy shrank by about a third, the lights went out for most of the day, and the average Cuban lost about five kilograms. The grid collapsed again in October 2024, before Washington's latest oil measures. Russia and China rushed to Havana's defence this year, Beijing hailing "Comrade Raul Castro" as a venerated revolutionary. Renowned champions of human rights, both. (Please hear the sarcasm).

The pattern is familiar. Criticism of Washington: always. Criticism of socialism: never. It is the same selective conscience in my view that drives so much of today's obsessive anti-Israel rhetoric.

So I was glad to see Jamaica abstain on last week's resolution, for the first time since the vote began in 1992, while still saying that the suffering of the Cuban people is of deep concern to us. The former leaders will call that a betrayal. I call it the centre at work: no slogans, no sides taken for the sake of it, just an honest look at who is hurting and who is doing the hurting.

WE'VE BEEN HERE

Jamaica knows the tune. In the 1970s and in 1980, Cold War slogans and party tribalism turned neighbour against neighbour, and hundreds died. The garrisons we built then are still standing. One lesson like that should be enough for any nation.

The temptation keeps coming back in new clothes. Some see only oppressors and victims; others see only traitors and patriots. Social media pays well for outrage and very little for nuance.

NO SAVIOUR ON THE BALLOT

Apart from God, there is no saviour here, and certainly not one running for office. I find that freeing. Every leader is flawed, every party is a mixed bag, and every policy swaps one set of problems for another. Low taxes and generous services, tough policing and full civil liberties, fast growth and careful conservation: these pull against each other.

Anyone promising you the lot by Christmas belongs in the back of a van with the 3-card man.

So let nuance come before rhetoric. Feelings matter, and so do our "oughts". We ought to care for the poor, punish crime and protect freedom. But an "ought" that has never met an "is" (i.e. reality as it stands presently) won't survive the first budget debate.

SLOW AND STEADY

Lasting positive change rarely arrives by riot or revolution. Burning down the house is a strange way to improve it, especially when you still have to live there, as Limoges is learning. The changes that stick come slower, from people with skin in the game: people who vote, work, save, raise their children, sit on the PTA and the citizens' association, pay their taxes and call their MP when something is wrong.

This is our country. It is my country. Checking out isn't an option, and neither is burning it all down.

I want a strong, ethical government and a strong, ethical opposition, both at once. I'd like each to admit when the other is right, which I realise may be asking for a miracle. Neither is a permanent villain or a permanent hero. Both are made of flawed people, like the rest of us, and we need both.

TWO CHEERS FOR THE CENTRE

The centre isn't trendy. But it is the bread and butter of ordinary civic life outside of campaign trails and emotionalism. It has no barricades, no team jersey and no anthem. Its loyalty is to truth and to country, not to a political party or ideology. It is still where stable nations get built, one compromise and one honest conversation at a time. So here's a cheer for the unglamorous middle, and for the quiet people who keep it.

Under God, Jamaica must thrive and grow in beauty, fellowship and prosperity. That won't happen at either end of the pendulum. In my view, it will happen in the patient middle, among people who love the country more than they love winning.

So, one more time: any centrists left?

- Francesca Tavares is an attorney-at-law, compliance professional, writer, commentor and co-creator of the Jamaican documentary ‘Traffick Blocking: The Docu-Film’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com. ONLINE ONLY COMMENTARY.