“History is nothing but a record of the crimes and misfortunes of man” wrote Voltaire. A famous Chinese proverb agrees - “Fortunate countries have no history”.
Compared to the often chilling chronicles of our nearest neighbours - Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic - Jamaica’s past makes pretty tame reading. We have no ‘Remember the Maine’ invasions, Citadelle Lafferriere horrors, or Trujillo massacres to contemplate with fascinated dismay. The Sam Sharpe slave uprising, the Morant Bay rebellion and the Frome riots would scarcely rate footnotes in these countries a mere 100 miles away. Jamaica did have to endure the unspeakable brutalities of slavery, but that was an almost universal New World experience. Even then slaves in the English speaking Caribbean were freed by decree a generation earlier than anywhere else, and there were no brutal liberation wars here as in Haiti.

Why did Alexander Bustamante break with the Norman Manley led People’s National Party in 1942 and form the Jamaica Labour Party? Some say Manley and Bustamante were ‘two bulls in a pen where only one could rule’. There is probably something to this. Politicians are by definition egotists. A man must think well of himself to ask others to vote for him. All election campaigns boil down to ‘I am the best man for the job.’

While in exile on St. Helena Napoleon was urged by his aides to write a book on military strategy. Why not let the world know the secrets of history’s finest general? The great man laughed. It would be easy to describe the details of his maneuvers. But what would be the point? It was not the theory that counted, but the actual doing. Execution was everything.

Politicians in other English-speaking liberal democracies understand that once they toss their hats into the ring, all aspects of their past and present lives will be put under a microscope.

When I came back to Jamaica from school in Canada in 1989, the $JA:US rate was 5.75. By 1994 it was over 33, a 583% increase in 5 years. It is now 141, meaning a 2,452% increase over 30 years. Given this historical context, the five to ten percent fluctuations of recent years are hardly worth panicking about.

Caricom is the planet’s largest grouping of mature democracies outside the European Union. For over 40 years, every member country (except Haiti and Suriname) has maintained a free press and independent judiciary, and regularly held free and fair elections.