Word: seaga
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...social democrat Michael Manley last week. He said it with a nice touch of humility, but with forgivable satisfaction as well, for he had just been given exactly that. His People's National Party (PNP), which he led as Prime Minister from 1972 to 1980, thrashed Prime Minister Edward Seaga's Jamaica Labor Party by winning at least 44 of 60 parliamentary seats. In a remarkable show of conciliation, the charismatic and often feisty Manley called on party members to "take this victory with dignity and humility," and paid tribute to the nation's security forces for maintaining relative order...
...more the stunned Jamaicans meandered among the ruins, the worse things looked. Of the 2 1/2 million inhabitants, 500,000 were suddenly homeless; four-fifths of the nation's homes had been damaged or destroyed. Obstructions blocked and sealed off streets and roads. Said Prime Minister Edward P.G. Seaga: "It's the worst natural disaster in our modern history. The storm has left a trail of wreckage the length of the island...
Electrical power and telephone service were wiped out as eight years of hard-won economic progress was smashed like a stomped melon. After surveying the day-after damage, Seaga declared that the impoverished island's economic expansion, percolating at 5% last year, had been set back a decade. That estimate may have been unduly pessimistic, but not by much. Most visibly, the glossy hotels and clubs that pull in the island's tourist trade were left a shambles, especially in the popular north-coast resort areas of Montego Bay and Ocho Rios. The banana crop, which was expected to produce...
Still, Gilbert has left behind a tangled and murky political situation. Only two weeks earlier, Jamaica's two primary political parties had launched their campaigns for an election in which Seaga is being challenged by former Prime Minister Michael N. Manley, the onetime socialist who presided over the economic decline that Seaga inherited. Manley's People's National Party had planned to warm up for the campaign and celebrate its 50th anniversary during an annual convention last week, but it was postponed because of the storm...
Recent polls indicate that the charismatic, crowd-pleasing Manley, who stole Seaga's thunder by purging his party's left wing and improving his relations with the business establishment, would handily win any early election. Some analysts believe the hurricane's devastation may now present Seaga with a dramatic opportunity to rally the country behind him in a reconstruction effort. Manley was quick to recognize that the political climate had changed radically overnight. Said he, after rushing to Kingston last week: "All politics are being put aside. There is not time to deal in partisan issues in this emergency...