Jamaica - Politics - 1970s
A review of political dynamics in independent Jamaica can begin in 1965, when illness forced Prime Minister Bustamante, one of Jamaica's two founding fathers, to resign from politics. Donald Sangster took over as acting prime minister and later became prime minister as a result of the narrow JLP victory in the February 1967 elections. He died suddenly two months later, however, and Hugh Shearer, the BITU president, succeeded him on April 12. The Shearer government was known for its weak management, factionalism, and corruption.
After Norman Manley's death in 1969, the JLP and PNP evolved along increasingly divergent lines. Beginning in 1970, the JLP's identification with domestic and foreign business interests became increasingly evident. After Manley died, his son Michael, a Third World-oriented social democrat, succeeded him as PNP leader and began to revive the party's socialist heritage. Michael Manley, who had been educated at Jamaica College and the London School of Economics, worked as a journalist and trade unionist (1952-72). Eloquent, tall, and charismatic, he defeated Shearer impressively in the February 1972 election, winning 56 percent of the popular vote, which gave the PNP 36 of the 53 seats in the House of Representatives. Manley, who represented Central Kingston, won but also from members of the middle and business classes disenchanted with the Shearer government.
Michael Manley's PNP won the 1972 election on a Rastafarian influenced swing vote of 8 percent. During the 1972 election campaign, Manley had tried to change his party's image by evoking the memory of Marcus Garvey, using symbols appealing to the Rastafarians, and by associating with their leader, Claudius Henry. Manley also had appeared in public with an ornamental "rod of correction" reputedly given him by Haile Selassie. Manley's informal dress and the PNP's imaginative use of two features of Rastafarian culture — creole dialect and reggae music — in the 1972 campaign were designed to dispel fears of elitism and woo the votes of those who had disparaged Norman Manley's facility with the English language.
During Michael Manley's terms as prime minister (1972—80), the PNP aligned itself with socialist and "anti-imperialist" forces throughout the world. Thus, for the first time, political divisions within Jamaica reflected the East-West conflict. Manley's PNP did not publicly announce its resurrected goal of "democratic socialism" until the fall of 1974, on the occasion of a state visit to Jamaica by Tanzania's socialist president Julius K. Nyerere. In addition to redirecting the PNP along these lines, Manley began building a mass party, with emphasis on political mobilization.
Manley's populist policies gave impetus to a shift, begun with independence, of many more dark-skinned middle-class Jamaicans moving upward into political and social prominence, taking over political and civil service positions from the old white elite. Prior to independence, most top leaders had Anglo-European life-styles and disdained many aspects of Jamaican and West Indian culture. By the 1970s, most Jamaican leaders preferred life-styles that identified them more closely with local culture.
In 1974 Seaga succeeded Shearer as JLP leader and began playing an active role as leader of the opposition (1974—80). Seaga and Manley continued the traditional JLP-PNP leadership rivalry in the 1970s, but on a far more bitter and intense level than had Bustamante and Norman Manley. Born in Boston in 1930 of Jamaican parents of Syrian and Scottish origin, Seaga was educated at Wolmer's Boys School in Kingston and at Harvard University. He joined the JLP in the late 1950s and was appointed by Bustamante to the Senate in 1959. A social scientist with expertise in financial, cultural, and social development areas, Seaga also served as minister of development and social welfare (1962—67) and minister of finance and planning (1967-72). Contrasting sharply with the affable and oratorical Manley, Seaga often has been described as remote and technocratic, with a stiff, formal manner.
Although he did not endear himself to the common man, Seaga earned a reputation as a highly disciplined, hard-working, and intellectual leader. Despite being white and wealthy, he represented Denham Town, one of the poorest and blackest constituencies of West Kingston, which regularly gave 95 percent of its vote to the JLP.
The December 1976 elections witnessed major realignments in class voting for the two parties, as well as unprecedented political violence and polarization on ideological and policy issues. The support of manual wage laborers and the unemployed resulted in another sweeping victory in the elections for the PNP; the party won 57 percent of the vote and 47 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. The PNP was also aided by the lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Despite losing a substantial number of votes among the upper-middle and upper classes as well as among white-collar employees, the PNP retained majority support among these sectors. Many Jamaicans did not share JLP concerns about the direction that the Manley government was taking.
A Stone Poll found that 69 percent of the electorate at that time rejected the JLP view that the PNP was leading the nation toward communism. The JLP had depicted the rising number of Cubans in Jamaica, who included technical, economic, and medical personnel, as a national security threat. According to a Stone Poll, however, a 63-percent majority viewed the Cuban presence in Jamaica favorably, believing the Cubans to be providing technical and economic assistance.
During his second term in office, Manley, having broadened the PNP's electoral base by wooing a number of charismatic left-wing leaders, veered sharply leftward. One of his left-wing cabinet appointees, Donald K. Duncan, headed the new Ministry of National Mobilization and had responsibility for supervising the government's "people's programs" in worker participation in industry and in the "democratization" of education. Despite the efforts of Duncan and others, the PNP left wing never succeeded in radically transforming the polity or the economy.
The PNP's dominant position in politics in the 1970s was reinforced on March 8, 1977, when the party won 237 Out of 269 municipal seats in local government elections, in which 58 percent of the electorate participated. By mid-term, however, internal PNP infighting between left-wingers and moderates had intensified, and JLP opposition had escalated. Support for the PNP declined considerably as the public became increasingly concerned over the PNP's alliance with the communist Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ), as well as growing unemployment, crime and other violence, internal party divisions, mismanagement of the government, and the government's close ties to Cuba.
The JLP, which continued to enjoy strong support in the business community, remained more pragmatic and flexible in policy than the PNP. JLP business executives and technocrats emerged in the top party positions, replacing the old guard labor leaders. Endorsing a platform described simply as "nationalism," JLP leaders continued to stand in the ideological center of the political system. They advocated a pro-United States, pro-free enterprise, and anti-Cuban ideology.
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