Achievements and Challenges

• Author: Trevor Munroe/Arnold Bertram
• Profession: Rhodes Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, political scientist, labour activist and politician, is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of the West Indies, Mona/Distinguished commentator on Jamaican Social History and Political Development is a former Legislator in both houses of the Jamaican Parliament and a former Minister of ...
• Pages: 671-714

Achievements and Challenges / 671

‘Not an Easy Road’

The decades long journey to adult suffrage in Jamaica was ‘not an

easy road’, beset as it was at every turn as much by resistance and

opposition from the colonial authorities as by hesitation and self-doubt

from amongst sections of the people. However, when the first election

held under adult suffrage came and passed on December 10, 1944, all

adjudged it a relative success. Between then and the 14th adult suffrage

election, held on October 16, 2002, similarly, it was ‘not an easy road’.

Nevertheless, in relation to the 2002 election in which the P.J. Patterson-

led PNP was again victorious, the verdict was also unambiguous in the

eyes of both Jamaican and international observers. The former group,

Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), concluded that

‘on the whole the election was fairly conducted and the results reflected

the will of the electors who voted’.1Equally, the Carter Center delegation

of 60 international observers from 16 countries ‘found the 2002 Jamaican

election to be exemplary in its organization and preparations and to reflect

adequately the will of the people’.2 The electoral element certainly

contributed to Jamaica becoming a ‘mature democracy’ by the 60th

anniversary of adult suffrage, albeit with a body politic seriously scarred

by conflict in the transition through childhood and adolescence to full

maturity.

In that journey, the adult Jamaican cast eight million votes in general

elections and five million in local government elections. By and large,

Achievements and Challenges

Chapter 16

672 / Post-Independence Administrations

the people have taken the vote seriously. Not less than five out of every

ten registered voters have cast their ballots and, on two occasions, the

turnout was heading for nine out of ten.

Table 16.1

Percentage Voted – Jamaican General Elections

Source: Report on General Elections (various years)

The leadership of the country has also taken the vote seriously, and

on all fourteen occasions accepted the verdict of the people as expressed

in the results of the elections. On five of these occasions (1955, 1962,

1972, 1980, 1989), a government and ruling party has left office

voluntarily and an opposition relatively peacefully taken over the reigns

of power as a result of an election result. Neither these transitions nor

the six decades of adult suffrage have been marred by the assassination

of political leaders, civil war, military takeover, or one-party dictatorship.

As the experiences of other colonies which achieved adult suffrage

before Jamaica or became independent at about the same time

demonstrate, this relative stability could well have been otherwise. Only

four of the one hundred-odd colonies and dependent states attained adult

suffrage before Jamaica, viz. Burma, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), the

Year Percentage

1944 55.1

1949 63.8

1955 63.9

1959 95.3

1962 72.3

1967 81.5

1972 78.2

1976 86.1

1983 28.9

1989 77.6

1993 66.7

1997 66.06

2002 59.06

Achievements and Challenges / 673

Philippines and New Zealand.3 Of these, only New Zealand has a record

of political stability and development, in the context of adult suffrage,

comparable to Jamaica’s. Burma has been under military rule since 1962.4

Sri Lanka has been experiencing a long-standing civil war between ethnic

groups, in which an estimated 65,000 people have been killed since 1983.5

The Philippines was under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos between

1972 and 1986. His successor Corazón Aquino had to survive seven

coup attempts and her successor, President Estrada, was impeached for

corruption and following massive street protests was forced to resign in

January 2001. The government since 2001 has had to face both

communist insurgency and Islamic terrorism.6

The contrast with Jamaica is no less stark in relation to those

countries — Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Trinidad and Tobago

and Western Samoa — which attained sovereignty in 1962, the year of

Jamaica’s Independence. Algeria has had on and off civil war since 1992,

in which between 100 and 150 thousand people have died.7Rwanda has

experienced a bloody coup and mass genocide.8 Burundi has suffered

from the assassination of the President in 1993 and ethnic violence

resulting in the loss of life of hundreds of thousands.9 Uganda experienced

two coups, in 1971 and 1985; 250, 000 opponents of President Obote

were killed.10 Trinidad and Tobago had an attempted coup in 1990 in

which the Parliament building was stormed, the Prime Minister and

eight government Ministers held hostage for four days, and 23 people

lost their lives.11 Western Samoa has experienced the assassination of a

government minister.12 Clearly, Jamaica’s post-adult suffrage record of

governance has not been marred in the manner of its contemporaries

amongst developing (and, as well, many developed) states.

This is not to say that there were not anxious moments which,

managed differently, might have led to the derailment of Jamaica’s

maturing democracy. In the 1940s, reports in the national media of a

plot to assassinate Bustamante, the country’s labour leader, could well

have aggravated violent conflict and political breakdown. Toward the

end of the 1950s and early 1960s, incipient insurrection, inspired by

radical Black Nationalism, might well have got out of control. In the

1970s, the international Cold War, fought out locally, could well have