UWI professor wary of term limit law

Professor of Political & Social Psychology at the University of the West Indies Mona, Christopher Charles has expressed reservations about implementing term limits for elected representatives and Prime Ministers in Jamaica.

This stance follows a recent RJRGLEANER Don Anderson poll, which found that nearly 76 per cent of respondents supported term limits for councilors and Members of Parliament, while 77 per cent believe there should be term limits for Prime Ministers.

While acknowledging the view that term limits help to prevent dictatorships, Professor Charles argues that imposing such limits would place restrictions on people's choice of their representatives beyond two terms.

He contends that, where constituents have good political representatives, who are "delivering," it would be "foolhardy to just have a structure that gets rid of them."

"That becomes a problem because the term limits rob the people of their choice over time," he observed during a discussion of the issue on Radio Jamaica's Beyond the Headlines, on Monday.

Director of Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections, Anton Thompson, who participated in the same discussion, said the poll results signal growing distrust among the Jamaican electorate, and coincide with what his organization has been observing: "A growing distrust and a growing unhappiness with the political representation that people are seeing, which is symbolised by the low voter turnout that we have been experiencing over the past few election cycles."

But, Professor Charles believes effective development requires long-term planning, which term limits might hinder.

Transformational development requires "long-term thinking and long-term planning, and allowing the poeple to reward people who are performing (with) more than two or three (terms) is important," he argued.