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Caribbean Islands Political Dynamics
Jamaica's two-party system, which had its roots in the rivalry
between William Alexander Bustamante and Norman W. Manley (see
Historical Setting, this ch.), resembles traditional North American
patterns. Both parties--the JLP and PNP--were formed and operated
by a relatively small number of men and with a high degree of
British and intraparty cooperation. By the 1960s, politics had
changed significantly from the time of the 1944 elections when the
country was predominantly rural and voting was based as much on
local issues and personalities as on national affairs. The JLP and
PNP, responding to sectional interest groups, appeared to move
closer to each other and away from the basic concerns of the
population, namely employment opportunities. Their paths later
diverged, but some similarities remained. Both parties operated as
multiclass alliances, whose adherents cut across class and racial
lines. Both represented frequently shifting group interests and
sought a large independent vote. Moreover, in their attempt to
appeal to all sectors of the population for votes and funds, both
parties adopted somewhat similar policies. Differences in foreign
policies, however, became more pronounced.
The two-party arrangement differed from the British and United
States systems in two important respects. One is that Jamaica's
elites, from which the island's leaders have emerged, are closely
knit groups; four of the nation's first five prime ministers were
related. The other difference is that party identification, not
race or class, is the primary political frame of reference. Each
party has a fiercely loyal, almost tribal, inner core defined by
family ties and neighborhood. Antagonism to the other party is
passionate and frequently violent.
Despite the intensity of party rivalry in Jamaica, Stone Polls
revealed the increasing importance of the "swing vote" in
determining electoral outcomes. At the time of independence, the
swing vote was only 5 percent, but by 1985 the percentage of
uncommitted voters had stabilized at 26. The growth of the swing
vote was accompanied by a periodic pattern of support for the two
parties. For example, the percentage of voters not committed to
either the JLP or PNP rose from 15 percent in November 1976 to 40
percent by mid-1978. During the same period, PNP support declined
from 40 to 28 percent, whereas that of the JLP fell from 37 to 32
percent. These declines were interpreted at the time as a loss of
support for the two major parties. Nevertheless, by December 1979
the percentage of uncommitted voters had dropped back down to 16,
whereas JLP support had climbed from 32 to 47 percent and PNP
support from 28 to 37 percent. Although their political interest
was seasonal, the uncommitted voters remained an integral part of
the support for the two major parties.
Unlike much of Hispanic Latin America and many former colonies
in Africa and Asia, Jamaica has enjoyed a tradition of political
stability, notwithstanding the escalating political violence on the
island during the 1974-80 period. The JLP and PNP alternated in
power every ten years in the general elections held between 1955
and 1980. Turnout at the polls during the postwar period and the
first twenty-five years of independence was consistently high, in
contrast to the average 3-percent voting rate in the seven general
legislative elections held between 1901 and 1934. Voter
participation increased steadily from 65 percent of the electorate,
or 495,000, in 1955 to 85 percent, or 736,000, in 1976.
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. Sir 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 was 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 thirty-six of the fifty-three House seats.
Manley, who represented Central Kingston, won support not only from
the lower classes, including the Rastafarians (see Glossary), but
also from middle and business classes disenchanted with the Shearer
government.
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
associating with their leader, Claudius Henry. Manley also had
appeared in public with an ornamental "rod of correction" reputedly
given him by Haile Selassie I. 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 upper house of the Legislative Council 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 forty-seven of sixty House
seats. 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 leftwing
leaders, veered sharply leftward. One of his leftwing cabinet
appointees, Donald K. Duncan, headed the new Ministry of National
Mobilization, with 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 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 leftwingers 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.
The 1980 election campaign, Jamaica's most bitter and violent,
was waged in the context of extreme scarcity of foreign exchange
and consequent shortages of all kinds of goods. Two central issues
in the campaign were the state of the economy, including the Manley
government's relations with the IMF (see Role of Government, this
ch.), and the JLP's charges that the Manley government had lost the
people's confidence because of its close relations with Cuba. Seaga
alleged in particular that the security forces were being subjected
to "communist infiltration" and that young "brigadistas"
(construction brigade members) who had received vocational training
in Cuba were subjected to political indoctrination. By 1980 the
majority of Jamaicans regarded the PNP government as incapable of
managing the economy or maintaining order in the society. Even the
security forces--fearful of being replaced by Home Guards, Cuban-
trained "brigadistas," and "people's militia"--joined the
opposition to the government.
In the October 30, 1980 elections, the PNP was unable to
withstand the alliance of the private sector, church, security
forces, media, intelligentsia, workers, and unemployed. The
electorate gave Seaga's JLP a landslide victory; the opposition
party won 59 percent of the vote and 51 of 60 seats in the House.
Despite the electoral violence, the election, in which a record 86
percent of the voters turned out, was considered one of the fairest
and most important in the nation's history. Other than some
incidents of fraud and box tampering, the number of contested votes
was relatively low. Stone has noted that the election was also the
first in which a party had won a majority of the parish vote in all
parishes.
After taking office as prime minister, Seaga, who also assumed
the finance portfolio, redirected the island's economy along free-
enterprise lines, emphasizing the role of the private sector and
continuing to encourage foreign investment. As the governing party,
the JLP under Seaga was described by Stone as "conservative
reformist." It continued to receive substantial support from the
100,000-member Bustamante Industrial Trade Unions (BITU), and JLP
policies were subject to strong labor influence. Nevertheless, the
party has not been able to take BITU support for granted, and the
BITU had been known to act independently.
In the early 1980s, Manley's opposition PNP, described by Stone
as "radical reformist," tried to moderate its political image.
Stone Polls conducted in early 1981 showed that over 70 percent of
the electorate was critical of the PNP's links with local
communists. The PNP subsequently broke with the WPJ in a move
supported by 71 percent of the electorate. As leader of the
opposition in the 1980s, Manley has been the country's most popular
party leader. His personality as an emotional nationalist and
socialist idealist has contrasted sharply with Seaga's. Manley also
has continued to represent Central Kingston, a middle-class
district, and serve as the NWU leader.
In late November 1983, Prime Minister Seaga responded to a PNP
leader's call for his resignation as finance minister by announcing
the holding of early elections on December 15, 1983. Having
achieved a significant increase in popularity because of Jamaica's
participation in the United States-Caribbean operation in Grenada
in late October, an action that a Stone Poll indicated was
supported by 56 percent of the electorate, Seaga was confident of
winning the snap elections. The PNP, unable to nominate candidates
within the four days allowed, boycotted the elections, arguing that
the government had broken a promise to update the voters' register
and to implement antifraud measures. The PNP claimed that up to
100,000 eligible voters were disenfranchised. As a result of the
PNP's boycott, the JLP had token opposition in only six of the
sixty parliamentary districts. By winning those races, the JLP
completed its control of the House, occupying all sixty seats. The
PNP's decision not to contest the election also made the prime
minister responsible for selecting the eight nongovernmental
opposition members of the Senate. When the government chose non-PNP
individuals with independent views, Jamaica found itself with an
unprecedented one-party Parliament and without an official leader
of the opposition. Ironically, a Stone Poll found that had it not
boycotted the election the PNP would have won the December 1983
elections with 54 percent of the vote and a 10-percent margin over
the JLP.
Although the holding of the snap elections was a constitutional
prerogative of the prime minister, it marked a departure from
Jamaica's traditional consensus politics and weakened the Seaga
government's public standing. A 59-to-38 percent majority
disapproved of the holding of early elections using the old voters'
register. At the same time, according to a December 1983 Stone
Poll, the public was generally divided over the PNP's boycott, with
47 percent disapproving of it and 46 percent approving. By a margin
of 70 to 26 percent, Jamaicans favored calling new elections when
the voters' list was ready. The PNP campaigned unsuccessfully
during 1985 for a general election to be held by October. The party
reasoned that this date would mark the end of the five-year mandate
that the electorate had given the JLP in 1980. Opinion polls
throughout 1985 showed that the PNP enjoyed a considerable lead
over the governing JLP. Nevertheless, the JLP held all sixty seats
in the House until early 1986, when two members defected.
Municipal elections, scheduled originally for June 1984 but
postponed twice, were held on July 29, 1986. Disputes over a
reduction in the number of council seats and a redrawing of local
constituency boundaries caused the delay. In what was the first
real contest between the two main parties since 1980, the
opposition PNP defeated the JLP soundly, taking 57 percent of the
vote and obtaining control of eleven of the thirteen municipalities
in which polling had taken place. An estimated 60 percent of the
970,000 eligible voters cast ballots. The JLP's heavy defeat in the
local elections was blamed largely on Seaga's austere economic
policies and deteriorating social and economic conditions. Buoyed
by the victory, Manley appealed, again unsuccessfully, for an early
general election; it was not expected to be held, however, before
late 1988.
At a JLP retreat held on October 12, 1986, Seaga announced his
decision to resign as prime minister in August 1987 and not to seek
re-election as leader of the JLP because of "personal
considerations" and unhappiness with the progress of his economic
recovery program. Seaga revoked his decision, however, at a JLP
meeting on November 5, 1986, after JLP members of Parliament and
parish councilors voted unanimously not to accept it. Critics
expressed skepticism over the strength of support for Seaga and
noted that he had used the resignation ploy twice before to rally
support successfully: in the early 1970s in a bid to challenge Hugh
Shearer for the JLP leadership and in 1979 as JLP leader.
Seaga's declining electoral prospects were again reflected in
a January 1987 Stone Poll. Sixty-three percent of those polled said
conditions had worsened since 1980 when the PNP had left office and
56 percent felt that Manley could run the country better than
Seaga; the poll gave Seaga only a 45-percent positive rating.
Another Stone Poll conducted nationwide in June 1987 found that the
JLP had picked up 2 percentage points, but still trailed the PNP by
15. In August 1987, Seaga became the target of serious criticism as
a result of his creation of a commercially run tourist attraction
in Ocho Rios called the Gardens of Cariñosa, which was also open to
the public for an admissions fee. The PNP and several columnists
questioned the propriety of public officials being involved in
private investments while still holding office. Although Manley was
clearly Jamaica's most popular political leader and favored next
prime minister in late 1987, health problems, including major
intestinal surgery the previous April, had cast a shadow on his
long-term political prospects.
As of 1987, Jamaica's two-party system had not been conducive
to the emergence of a third parliamentary party. During the
nation's first twenty-five years of independence, twenty-seven
minor political parties had tried to take over that role but had
become defunct within a year. There is no constitutional
impediment, however, to third-party representatives or even
independents becoming recognized as "the opposition," provided they
can win the second largest bloc of seats in Parliament. Jamaicans
generally were satisfied with the two-party system. A February 1985
Stone Poll indicated that a 78-percent majority saw no need for a
new political party. Only 11 percent supported the idea of forming
a new party.
The communist WPJ, having functioned as Jamaica's officially
recognized third party since the late 1970s, has set a longevity
record. Founded by Trevor Munroe, its secretary general, on
December 17, 1978, the WPJ (formerly known as the Workers
Liberation League) adopted a pro-Moscow, avowedly Marxist-Leninist
orientation. It advocated a "nonalignment" policy for Jamaica that
Munroe defined as distancing the country from the United States and
Britain. Munroe, who had earned a
doctorate at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, had
held the position of senior lecturer in government at UWI.
According to a March 1985 Stone Poll, the WPJ had increased its
popular support from 3 to 4 percent, but 58 percent of Jamaicans
were still hostile to the party. The WPJ failed to elect a single
councillor island-wide in the July 1986 local elections; its best
showing in any of the divisions was 7 percent. The WPJ's relations
with Cuba were strained in the mid-1980s became of WPJ criticism of
Cuba's perceived failure to back the Bernard Coard-Hudson Austin
regime in Grenada that overthrew and assassinated Prime Minister
Maurice Bishop (see Political Dynamics, this ch.). The Cuban
Communist Party and WPJ repaired relations, however, and Munroe
attended the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in Havana
in early February 1986.
A United States resident, James Chrisholm, founded another
third party of quite different orientation, the Jamaican-American
Party (JAP), on April 5, 1986. Advocating a United States statehood
platform, the JAP nominated six candidates in the July 29, 1986,
local elections. Fewer than 1 percent of Jamaicans questioned in a
May 1986 Stone Poll indicated they would vote for the JAP, although
41 percent had heard about it.
JLP and PNP leadership relations during the Seaga
administrations have been characterized by clashing viewpoints on
a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Stone noted in
1985 that on every politically sensitive issue, ranging from
security and police matters to government economic policies and
political issues, JLP and PNP opinions were separated by a huge gap
and deep mutual distrust. Somewhat contradictorily, however, Stone
Polls found that during the 1970s and 1980s the public gradually
became less inclined to vote according to partisan loyalties.
According to the May 1986 Stone Poll, political opinions appeared
to be converging at the center, with PNP and JLP supporters
agreeing more than disagreeing on many sensitive political issues.
For example, according to the poll 85 percent of the PNP and 65
percent of the JLP opposed United States statehood, whereas in the
poll taken in the early 1980s 32 percent of the PNP and 57 percent
of the JLP favored it. Nevertheless, the JLP and PNP continued to
disagree on many issues.
Manley's views on foreign affairs in the 1980s continued to
reflect his left-of-center, Third World orientation and therefore
clashed frequently with those held by Seaga. Manley maintained
close relations with Fidel Castro, whom he visited periodically in
Havana for private talks. The PNP declared its intention to renew
Jamaican-Cuban relations, broken by Seaga in 1981, if it should win
the elections that were expected to be held in 1988 (see Foreign
Relations, this ch.). Manley and the PNP also were critical of the
alleged militarization of the Commonwealth Caribbean and United
States military activities in the region. The PNP opposed Jamaica's
participation in the joint United States-Caribbean military
operation in Grenada in October 1983, as well as participation in
regional military maneuvers with the United States.
With the principal exceptions of South Africa and the events in
Grenada, the Jamaican electorate generally has evinced little
interest in foreign policy issues since independence. The level of
public and parliamentary information or discussion on international
problems has been low. Public commentaries on foreign policy issues
were limited to views expressed by the urban elite and
intellectuals in the Daily Gleaner and radio talk shows.
Stone Polls revealed, however, that international issues had begun
to have a greater impact on domestic politics in the late 1970s;
Grenada was a particularly divisive issue in 1979-83. The
assassination of Maurice Bishop in Grenada and the subsequent
multinational military intervention in October 1983 had a major
impact on Jamaican domestic politics. PNP supporters favored the
Bishop regime, whereas JLP adherents were strongly critical of it.
According to a December 1983 Stone Poll, 86 percent of the JLP was
in favor of the intervention and 60 percent of the PNP, opposed).
Although Jamaica has traditionally had a free press and an
absence of censorship, the government was not without considerable
influence over news media such as the Jamaica Broadcasting
Corporation (JBC) and the independent Radio Jamaica Ltd.(RJR). The
PNP has accused the Seaga government of using RJR and JBC in a
partisan manner. Similar charges were made by the JLP when the JBC
and other media, except for the Daily Gleaner, were
controlled by Manley's government in the 1970s. During the 1980
election campaign, the JBC waged a vitriolic propaganda campaign
against the United States. Since the mid-1970s, both national radio
stations have broadcast popular "phone-in" programs that have
politicized the mass media increasingly. On October 8, 1984, the
Seaga government made the Jampress News Agency, which had been
suspended since 1980, its official news outlet. Jampress replaced
the news-gathering function of the Jamaica Information Service
(JIS), which was restructured and remained a full department of
government under the Ministry of Public Service.
Marijuana eradication was another sensitive political issue,
especially insofar as the appearance of foreign pressure was
concerned. There was widespread and bitter resentment against the
antimarijuana drive. Traffickers in Jamaica, known as "Robin
Hoods," had cultivated selected local loyalties by supplying funds
for school construction and road improvements. Whereas 66 percent
of Jamaicans expressed support for the policy of marijuana
eradication in a 1979 Stone Poll, a January 1987 poll found that
opinions had swung against the government's antidrug policies.
Forty-seven percent of the population rejected the policies because
they prevented many rural people from earning money during hard
economic times. The 46 percent of the public who supported the
government's actions felt that drugs were destroying the youth,
corrupting the country, and fueling crime and other violence.
Opinions divided along party lines; 70 percent of JLP supporters
were for marijuana eradication and 57 percent of PNP supporters
against.
Several religious groups or cults, primarily the Rastafarians,
traditionally have used marijuana (called "ganja" in Jamaica) as a
sacramental drug. Cultivated clandestinely in mountainous areas,
ganja is rolled into huge flute-shaped cigarettes called spliffs
and smoked. In other popular uses, ganja leaves are baked into
small cakes, brewed for tea, soaked in rum, drunk with roots as an
aphrodisiac, used as a poultice to reduce pain and swelling, or
used popularly as a cold remedy.
Both the JLP and PNP were widely believed in the 1980s to have
received campaign contributions from narcotics traffickers. A
January 1987 Stone Poll revealed that 68 percent of those polled
felt that both parties received drug money. Seaga noted on November
31, 1986, that marijuana barons were fast becoming deeply involved
in Jamaica's political situation. Two years earlier, on October 1,
1984, Seaga reported that the security forces had discovered a plot
by narcotics traffickers to assassinate him; no suspects were
named, however, and no arrests were made.
Data as of November 1987
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