Word: jamaicas
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Supporters rang brass bells in celebration. Swooning youths snaked through dances of joy. Party workers tearfully embraced one another. With a sobriety that contrasted with the noisy jubilation all around him, Edward P.O. Seaga, leader of the Jamaica Labor Party, emerged into the spotlight at his Kingston campaign headquarters and claimed "the most dramatic electoral victory in the history of the country." Unlike much of the preceding campaign's rhetoric, this was no exaggeration...
...ability to attract foreign investment. In his victory statement, in fact, Seaga said his first order of business would be to restore economic growth. And while he insisted that there would be no break in relations with Havana, he left little doubt that he planned to alter Jamaica's foreign policy. He asked the Cuban Ambassador, who had been accused of meddling in Jamaican affairs, to leave the island forthwith...
...clear that the voters blamed Manley for the country's economic morass. During his eight years as Prime Minister, the handsome, magnetic Manley, 55, scion of the island's most prominent political family, had made some significant contributions to Jamaica: a minimum wage, free education, equal pay for women, newly built health centers and 40,000 units of low-income housing. But endemic poverty remained, and critics charged his administration with woeful mismanagement. His warm abrazo for Fidel Castro frightened the middle class as well as foreign investors. Soon Jamaica found itself with a severe brain drain...
EDWARD SEAGA'S STATEMENTS to date are about as "fascist" (as some have charged) as those of John Anderson. Jamaica must work with Western banks, public and private, to emerge from its economic morass. Conditions have actually worsened in the last few months before the election: Manley depleted almost all of Jamaica's remaining foreign reserves to stock the store shelves and give the temporary, but artificial, impression that the economy had improved. Foreign capital, properly regulated, can provide prosperity and well being for the masses, as has been proved in Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. Oil imports...
Seaga does not have the powerful mystical appeal of Michael Manley, but his performance in government before Manley's tenure did more to help the poor of Jamaica than Manley's violent rhetoric and devastating economic policies did in eight years. Cudjoe claims that Seaga will put Jamaica back 10 years; after nearly a decade of Manley, perhaps this is just what Jamaica needs...