The troubles of Jamaica
Rickey Singh column
AS CHAOS, violence and fear filled the streets of the Jamaican capital, Kingston, last week, there came a plaintive cry from a woman on a radio talk-show: "Please don't burn the city ... I want my country back". That soulful appeal echoed the sentiments of the great mass of Jamaican people who desperately hope for a return to a life when criminal violence, riotous demonstrations, destabilisation politics and threats to the rule of law were not so common features in this member state of the Caribbean Community. But this harking back to the past seems to remind us of a Jamaica prior to the mid-1970s. The viciousness of its political tribalism was very much in evidence by the time of the first violent protests against hikes in the price of petrol in 1979. The fuel hikes demonstrations were to precede the bitter ideological, anti-communist, anti-Cuba war in which the Jamaica Labour Party became involved against the People's National Party with disturbing manifestations in 1980. A combination of the ideological war - in which the American CIA and Cuba's DGI were at work - and International Monetary Fund-linked structural adjustment programmes were to aggravate the deep-rooted problems of Jamaica with its contrasting faces of deep-rooted poverty and crime, and wealth and alienation. The hikes in fuel prices seem to be the occasion for wars against whichever government happens to be running the country's affairs from Kingston. But really, they are manifestations of widespread frustrations of a people whose struggles and sacrifices have not brought them the relief they need from the poverty and deprivation that continue to afflict far too many of them in this Caribbean land of some 2.3 million people. From the first 1979 protests against increased fuel prices, when the PNP was in power under Michael Manley, to the second in 1985 under a JLP administration of Edward Seaga, came the most costly, in lives and damages, last week with a third-term PNP government under intense pressures over its 1999 budgetary tax measures. At the time of writing, there was confirmation of nine dead, five others shot, scores injured and some 152 persons arrested after three days of virtual siege in the capital and island-wide disturbances that stretched the resources and patience of the security forces to the limit. By Thursday evening, hopes for a return to what could be considered "normalcy" - read that to mean a suspension of violent demonstrations and defiance of the security forces - had to contend with the reality that both the main opposition JLP and the minor National Democratic Movement (NDM) of Bruce Golding were still sparring for a fight against the package of taxes, including increased fuel prices. To Seaga's demands for a `roll-back' in the fuel tax, Prime Minister Percival Patterson took to the airwaves to plead for calm and understanding. The country must face the harsh reality that had forced his Finance Minister, Omar Davies, to present the new tax measures that could help the government in servicing the equivalent of a staggering 62 per cent of its 1999 budget of JA$160.1B (JA$35.70 = US$1) Guyana is perhaps in the best position among CARICOM states to sympathise with Jamaica's debt payment burden. Today's government in Georgetown had to spend about 60 per cent of total earnings from exports to finance indebtedness of some US$2.1B, inherited in 1992, that the PPP/Civic has succeeded in reducing to about 15 per cent of export earnings. But in Kingston, Prime Minister Patterson's political foes have their own ideas about forcing a roll-back of tax measures. They are seemingly anxious to show their paternity to the escalating demonstrations that had seriously worsened by Wednesday. By then, Parliament was informed by Patterson of his decision to establish a special committee under the chairmanship of Peter Moses, head of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, to come up with alternative recommendations on adjustments to the fuel tax. Mr Seaga's JLP, which has had a long period of internal problems, including leadership, seems anxious to flex its muscle for all its worth in exploiting the current wave of protests against the 1999 tax proposals and on fuel in particular. After all, the JLP is still running behind the PNP in the public opinion polls, with the latest showing that some 39 per cent of respondents consider the performance of the JLP to be "poor" and "very poor" by 21 per cent. However, a worrying factor for both parties must be that while the PNP received a 25 per cent favourable rating and the JLP 20, the majority of respondents remain uncommitted - some 15 months after the last general election that the PNP secured with a landslide victory. A report from the Moses Committee is expected by today for Cabinet consideration tomorrow. Even if some adjustments take place, as seems likely, in the fuel tax package as they relate to transport, electricity and water, the government's breathing space may be short-lived. It is still faced with pay hike demands from public sector workers over the three-year period (1998-2000). Altogether, there are some 38 pay claims that would cost the government some JA$48B (JA$35.70 = US$1). But the government has already declared that this was simply "not affordable" and is proposing increases not exceeding 10 per cent or just over three per cent annually. So, the troubles are far from over in Jamaica whose current problems are bound to impact negatively on CARICOM's arrangements for the removal of lingering trade barriers and creation of a single market and economy by 2000. 
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