Moving back to moderation
The political winds are blowing from left to right in the Caribbean. Seven of the area's island states this year have retained or produced governments that range from moderate to conservative. The most dramatic of the shifts took place three weeks ago in Jamaica, where voters ousted the eight-year-old government of Prime Minister Michael Manley, 56, a charismatic, pro-Cuban Socialist whose inefficient policies had helped bring his once prosperous island to the edge of bankruptcy.
Manley's successor is Edward Seaga, 50, American-born, Harvard-educated leader of the Jamaica Labor Party. An experienced international economist whose campaign promised closer ties with the U.S., Seaga has already obtained financing from commercial banks to cover the country's $157 million debt through the end of the year. The shootouts that terrorized Kingston's slums during the bloody nine-month campaign have tapered off as a result of nightly curfews and police raids; tourist bookings are picking up again, and Jamaican professionals who went into exile during the hard times of Manley's rule are beginning to return home. The new government has also moved to legalize the use of foreign exchange derived from the marijuana trade, which is estimated to total $1 billion a year. Last week Seaga gave an exclusive interview about the policies his government will pursue to TIME Caribbean Bureau Chief William McWhirter. Excerpts:
On the Caribbean. Jamaicans are totally fed up with the chaos and the crisis through which they have gone. Jamaica used to be the pearl of the Caribbean, the model economy, proud to the point that we were resented by some other countries. To see Jamaica fall to the state where it was becoming an international beggar, totally broke, helped the other Caribbean countries to realize that this was not the way. They evaluated their own political movements in terms of what they saw happening in Jamaica. Hence there has been a very distinct shift, along with ours, in their own governments, away from radical ideological adventures toward a traditional strategy of economic development. But if the move back to moderation is not accompanied by an increased standard of living and a more stable society, then we move right back to a replay of the period we have just passed through.
On U.S. Policy. Successive elections this year have now settled ideologically the direction in which the Caribbean wishes to move. In order to deal with that, a proper U.S.-Caribbean policy must be framed. We do not know of any U.S. Administration that has ever had a Caribbean policy. The closest we have come to one were some initiatives taken by the Carter Administration, which sent task forces through the area to assess the problems and set up action teams for better relationships. In the U.S., the general outlook is, well, who's in power and for how long is he going to be there. Washington has been very neglectful about knowing who our politicians are. It is extremely important for you to know us on a first-name basis.