The let-down of good gov­er­nance fore­shad­ows the promise to gov­ern wise­ly and with em­pa­thy, which en­tails qual­i­ty-of-life im­prove­ment through vi­able prob­lem res­o­lu­tion in crime, ed­u­ca­tion, health and the econ­o­my.

Cit­i­zens are fa­tigued by of­fen­sive po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iours, lan­guage sug­gest­ing ret­ri­bu­tion against op­po­nents in­stead of jus­tice, the un­de­nied in­flu­ence of cam­paign fi­nanciers ex­act­ing rec­om­pense, and poor pub­lic ser­vice.

At all stages of their lives, peo­ple as­pire to a bet­ter, hap­pi­er and more se­cure ex­is­tence. They con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly re­spond to in­spir­ing promis­es and sym­bols, es­pe­cial­ly when dai­ly liv­ing in­volves high crime and com­mu­ni­ty stress.

Peo­ple want to “win” in life. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not on­ly words but al­so about peo­ple’s feel­ings, so the PNM didn’t just lose the elec­tion; the UNC won with an em­pa­thet­ic, mo­ti­va­tion­al, and in­spir­ing grass-roots cam­paign and a charis­mat­ic leader who has the au­dac­i­ty and courage to sur­vive the rep­u­ta­tion­al on­slaughts in­her­ent in the po­lit­i­cal swamp.

Un­ques­tion­ably, she has been the ob­ject of ridicule and hu­mil­i­at­ing memes, but her swift and sting­ing re­spons­es, de­liv­ered with com­pelling poise, al­so wound­ed op­po­nents and raised their ire.

The PNM’s loss was ex­pect­ed, though the earth­quake was not. But a misog­y­nis­tic com­mer­cial at­tack­ing her age and phys­i­cal frail­ness to pro­mote a young and en­er­getic op­po­nent of­fend­ed many of us who find our cell­phones and car keys in the fridge.

There were many rea­sons why over 100,000 PNM sup­port­ers didn’t vote. Some cit­ed ar­ro­gance, but that trait was dom­i­nant when the elec­torate vot­ed for that par­ty twice in the past ten years. Some said it was re­venge for the un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic way MP Stu­art Young was ap­point­ed PM. Oth­ers say the gov­ern­ment was out of touch with the peo­ple.

It ap­pears that sev­er­al events cre­at­ed dis­af­fec­tion, so­ci­o­log­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly.

The so­ci­o­log­i­cal has to do with so­ci­ety’s cul­ture, struc­ture, and func­tion­ing; po­lit­i­cal par­ties elect their lead­ers. They do not se­lect them. Four per cent salary in­crease, take it or leave it, but the politi­cians will take 40 per cent. The core is­sue was gov­ern­ment’s in­tegri­ty, re­spect, and good faith, not mon­ey. PM Young couldn’t ex­tri­cate him­self from that with­out ab­so­lu­tion. More so in the face of work­ers’ strug­gle to make ends meet, and crime am­bush­ing our sense of safe­ty.

In many places, peo­ple are ques­tion­ing whether democ­ra­cy is on the re­treat, even in its tra­di­tion­al bas­tions, grav­i­tat­ing to­ward Pla­to’s pro­pos­al of gov­ern­ment by the edict of one per­son or a se­lect­ed group liv­ing in an il­lu­so­ry world. That kind of gov­er­nance con­tributes to a neg­a­tive hu­man con­di­tion.

Cab­i­net mem­bers who col­lec­tive­ly fear stand­ing their ground against their lead­ers’ im­puls­es, es­pe­cial­ly if they know the prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy will be un­der­mined, should blame them­selves for fail­ures, not on­ly their leader.

I al­ways hes­i­tate to crit­i­cise the po­lice ser­vice; I ap­pre­ci­ate their lead­er­ship chal­lenges. But if the com­mis­sion­er feels that God will res­cue us from the bru­tal­i­ty of blood crimes, then he should re­sign and be­come a full-time preach­er.

The gov­ern­ment failed to act on a ra­tio­nal re­cruit­ment process for com­mis­sion­ers. No fail­ures are ac­ci­den­tal. Po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions are fre­quent­ly not the re­sult of an in­tel­lec­tu­al process that ra­tio­nalis­es the best means to an end.

So, too, promis­es have of­ten been just that, de­spite good in­ten­tions. How­ev­er, a peren­ni­al op­ti­mist may as­sume that most things are pos­si­ble if there’s col­lec­tive will and thought­ful­ness. The process for ful­fill­ing the promise of a ten per cent thresh­old to start wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and tax-free pen­sions wasn’t ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the UNC man­i­festo, but re­gard­ing pen­sions, about 80 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion al­ready falls be­low the an­nu­al tax-free lim­it of $90,000.

NIS isn’t taxed, nor are sin­gle pre­mi­um an­nu­ities, de­pend­ing on the in­come source. The prob­lem is that the age­ing pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing faster than the PAYE pop­u­la­tion. The ten per cent start to wage ne­go­ti­a­tions is prob­a­bly over a three-year col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing con­tract, and there­fore, the an­nu­al min­i­mum start may well be just over 3.3 per cent but still pose a fi­nan­cial prob­lem.

As for prop­er­ty tax, my views are well known. The method of cal­cu­lat­ing the tax is uni­ver­sal but not ap­pro­pri­ate for here. It’s in­equitable. The bur­den falls dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly on those who in­vest­ed to main­tain their prop­er­ties to qual­i­ty liv­ing stan­dards but could nev­er rent them based on the gov­ern­ment-es­ti­mat­ed mar­ket val­ues. It’s of­fi­cial rob­bery, tax­ing cit­i­zens for lo­cal gov­ern­ment cof­fers with­out ex­act­ing any ac­count­abil­i­ty from lo­cal gov­ern­ment agen­cies for ex­pen­di­tures, fos­ter­ing crim­i­nal mis­chief. Move on.

The Hon Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an over­whelm­ing man­date to gov­ern. How she will im­ple­ment that man­date to im­prove our con­di­tions of life will be the test of her lead­er­ship.