Here's a corporate news article that predicted that the right would win in a tight race, and were wrong--the left won in a runaway victory. But the article makes some important points that help in understanding the real-world election result. For one thing, in Jamaica, the so-called "Labor Party" is the rightwing and the Peoples National Party is the leftwing.
----
Tight race expected as Jamaica opens polls
The center-right party of Jamaica's youngest prime minister was in a tight race against the left-leaning party headed by the island's first female leader in a battle to win control of the government for the next five years.
Jamaican elections have turned violent in the past but there were no reports of trouble as polls opened on Thursday for the 63 parliamentary races.
Soldiers with automatic weapons kept watch over the polling station in the Mona neighborhood where Prime Minister Andrew Holness was expected to cast his ballot and where the voters appeared sharply divided.
With most opinion polls putting the two parties in a dead heat, candidates have scrambled for traction with undecided voters across the Caribbean island.
Holness is a 39-year-old lawmaker who was chosen to be prime minister by his Jamaican Labour Party just two months ago when predecessor Bruce Golding resigned amid dwindling public support. He has promised new jobs in a debt-wracked nation with roughly 13 per cent unemployment.
Holness, largely seen as unexciting but calm and pragmatic, said his party has started to reverse economic stagnation and has effectively battled criminal gangs that have long been the scourge of the country. He has also pledged to modernize the bloated public sector without massive layoffs.
Economic challenges
Opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller, a stalwart of the People's National Party (PNP) since its days as a democratic socialist faction in the 1970s, has dismissed Holness as indecisive and painted his party as hopelessly corrupt and unsympathetic to the plight of Jamaica's many poor inhabitants.
Simpson Miller was born in rural poverty and grew up in a Kingston ghetto. Also referred to as "Sista P" and "Comrade Leader," she is known for her plain speaking style and warm interactions with supporters.
But detractors say she was out of her depth during her brief tenure as Jamaica's first female prime minister between March 2006 to September 2007, when her party was narrowly voted out of power.
The winner will face deep economic problems. The island of 2.8 million people has a punishing debt of roughly $18.6bn, or 130 per cent of gross domestic product, a rate about 10 percentage points higher than Italy's.
Jamaica's economy has been on a meager upswing, but roughly 60 per cent of government spending still goes to debt and another 30 per cent pays wages. That leaves just 10 per cent for education, health, security and other parts of the budget.
The political team at the Jamaica Gleaner, the island's largest newspaper, has projected that Labour will hold onto power by capturing 34 of the 63 seats, while the PNP will claim 29.
http://mwcnews.net/news/americas/15838-jamaica-opens-polls.html
-----
Jamaica has been ravaged by U.S.-designed "free trade for the rich" which is a type case of how the poor are ground into the dust by Transglobal corporate interests. The grinding starts with corrupt IMF/World Bank loans negotiated by corrupt local politicians and banksters with repayment terms requiring, for instance, dumping of U.S. Big Ag products on local markets to drive small local Jamaican farmers out of business and "free trade zones" where Jamaican labor laws do not apply. The onerous loan conditions of course mean that Jamaica will never be able to repay the loans and will sink further into poverty, with--in this case--the loans now costing SIXTY PERCENT of government revenues!
Let me put it this way: U.S. and Euro/UK banksters are grabbing food right out of the mouths of poor Jamaican children and books out of their hands. Money that would go to creating a future for Jamaica is being extracted from Jamaica in repayment of loans that did nothing for Jamaica and, instead, plunged the great majority of Jamaicans into a downward spiral, while the rich get richer.
Jamaica's local agriculture is a heartbreaking example of how this works. IMF/World Bank loan conditions require Jamaica to let the U.S. dump cheap powdered milk on the Jamaican market, for instance. Local dairy farmers with long family traditions and skills at providing FRESH MILK to their local community cannot compete and have been driven out of business forever. Their children, instead of learning dairy farming and inheriting the business end up in the new "free trade zone" at the docks, where low-paid labor manufactures crap for the "global market" directly at the docks which is then dumped onto big tankers and sails away--all of this occurring outside of Jamaica's legal and taxation system! Or these children of once proud, self-supporting, community-oriented farming families end up on the streets, in gangs, in drug trafficking or prostitution. And Jamaica can no longer feed itself.
i hope that Jamaica's socialist party--the party that won--can turn this horror around. Jamaica is very unfortunately located in the U.S. corporate/war profiteer "circle the wagons" area--Central America and the Caribbean--where countries like Honduras and Haiti are subjected to direct U.S. State Department-rigged elections and where the U.S. 4th Fleet, reconstituted by the Bush Junta, roams the Caribbean amidst Pentagon bases in a quite direct threat of aggression against the sovereignty and independence of this region's countries.
There is good precedent, however, especially in South America, for countries banding together for collective strength against U.S. corporate/war profiteer bullying and exploitation. The many new leftist governments in South America have led the huge movement for regional economic/political integration, through a new institution--CELAC--which (unlike the OAS) does NOT including the U.S. and Canada. CELAC just held its formalization meeting with representatives at the highest levels from every LatAm/Caribbean country in attendance. This is the future. U.S. exploitation is the past.
How CELAC came about goes back to the mid-2000s' and critically important alliances between Venezuela and Argentina and Venezuela and Brazil, where the policy of "raising all boats" was first devised by the new leftist leaders of those countries. Venezuela, for instance, helped Argentina out of ruinous World Bank/IMF debt. Brazil then joined Venezuela in helping victim countries. Venezuela was also the key player, along with Cuba, in the formation of ALBA, a mostly Central America/Caribbean barter trade group, which now has many members including Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador. ALBA was conceived as a direct rival to U.S. "free trade for the rich."
So there is hope for Jamaica. Jamaica's rightwing party (the Labor Party) was hostile to ALBA. The Peoples National Party--the socialist party that just won this big victory--may seek to join ALBA. However, Honduras joining ALBA was one of several major reasons that the U.S. supported the rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras in mid-2009 (designed by the Bush Junta, carried out under Obama with the U.S. rigging an election to ensure rightwing victory, post-coup). The Zelaya government had joined ALBA. The pro-U.S. rightwing coup government immediately rescinded that membership--one of the first acts of the coup government.
In short, Jamaica is in an economic war zone--and one that could turn into a hot war zone, should ES&S/Diebold decide to re-install Bushwhacks in the White House. Jamaica's new socialist government will have to walk a U.S. minefield to achieve independence, sovereignty and--hopefully, some day--poverty alleviation and prosperity for all. Truth is, Jamaica cannot achieve these things alone. That is why organizations like CELAC and ALBA have come into existence.
= new reply since forum marked as read
