Democratic Breezes on St. Kitts-Nevis
COLBURN, FORREST D.
PROMISE IN THE CARIBBEAN Democratic Breezes on St. Kitts-Nevis BY FORREST D. COLBURN Tucked into the eastern Caribbean are the tiniest nations in the world—St. Kitts-Nevis, Barbados, St. Lucia,...
...They further indicate an interest and a partisanship occasionally so intense that one foreign resident recently complained, "Politics spoil the island...
...Discovered by Columbus in 1493, St...
...In fact, the Labor and ruling coalition platforms are not very different...
...Sugar, accounting for 18 per cent of the gross domestic product and 65 per cent of exports, is a perennial headache...
...And the promotion of private and foreign investment has generated employment as well as otherwise stimulated the economy to the point where the administration has been able to abolish the income tax...
...Cynics describe its political liberation as "flag independence," because the country is—perhaps inescapably—far from self-reliant...
...Still, it was a festive day in St...
...Such insults are hardly edifying, but they do reflect the open spirit of the political system today in St...
...In 1984 costs will exceed revenues in the industry...
...A six-week course covering basic field operations is conducted by an eight-person U. S. Special Forces team...
...Power, once gained, can be maintained and abused easily where there are few social organizations other than government...
...Labor's problems were compounded when Bradshaw died in 1978, andhis long-time lieutenant and successor died the following year...
...But party lines cut across social groups, and effective performance pays off at the polls...
...military aid policy is that there is no guarantee of who the guns may ultimately be pointed at...
...Every island in the eastern Caribbean also harbors young radicals—the most extreme, ironically, are not those returned from Cuba or Grenada, but the United States —who are impatient with the pace of development...
...The U.S...
...Kitts became the first British Caribbean settlement in 1623...
...Kitts-Nevis' future as economically and politically trouble free...
...Meanwhile, Nevis, feeling neglected, began agitating for secession...
...The history of St...
...The development of tourism or assembly-line manufacturing would direct growth to the urban pockets, rather than the depressed rural areas where it is most urgently needed...
...Furthermore, it remains an open question whether islanders confronted with a determined dictator or an economic crisis would adhere to European principles of democracy...
...When the ballots were counted, 30 years of Labor predominance ended...
...Even more remarkable is the development of a competitive party democracy...
...But the ways a small Caribbean island might do that are limited, and no secret...
...Its fertile soil led to the establishment of the area's most productive sugar plantations...
...At the ceremonies marking the actual date this took effect, September 19,1983, the rear of the stage collapsed and Princess Margaret had a few too many drinks...
...The coalition named Kennedy SimForrest D. Colburn, a new contributor, is assistant professor ofpolitical science at Florida International University...
...Kitts-Nevis suffer, too, from political weaknesses imposed by their size...
...In the 1780s, when France was set to invade St...
...The danger of the U.S...
...In front of the Labor Party's building, located directly across from the government offices, there is a large blackboard where messages are scribbled daily...
...A local joke observes that there are two undertakers on the island—one per party...
...the competition between the two groups prevents misuse of authority more than it introduces alternative policies...
...Social services have been expanded...
...A confident Simmonds, for instance, called early elections that were held last June 21 and the coalition was returned overwhelmingly...
...By 1966 the British granted St...
...Vincent, Dominica, Grenada—and nearby islands will soon shed their colonial status as well...
...The continual fluctuation in its price undercuts overconfidence in PAM's current success...
...Thus the opposing parties share an economic policy that can be summed up in one word, "diversify...
...This left the party facing the 1980 general elections without its top figures...
...Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think of St...
...It is not clear now how deep the roots of commitment to democracy have subsequently spread...
...in the Grenada invasion, Kennedy Simmonds was the third—after Jamaica's Edward Seaga and Antigua's Vere Bird—to call early elections and win...
...Neighbors who belong to different parties sometimes refuse to speak to each other...
...Opponents could no longer be easily dismissed by accusing them of planter sympathies, or of being puppets of the plantocracy...
...These strategies have the additional disadvantage of involving heavy outside investment and the presence of more foreigners, producing greater social inequality and increasing the opportunities for corruption, already a plague in the Caribbean...
...Simmonds, who in his own words eschews "rigid ideology and pet economic theories," is equally comfortable addressing Rastafarians or courting foreign bankers...
...The views of the emerging local leaders had largely been shaped by their union struggles against what they saw as the Colonial Office's collusion with the implacable, yet increasingly politically diminished, planters...
...Although it benefited from lowering the voting age to 18, since it is popular with young people, its sweeping nine of Parliament's 11 seats demonstrated broad support...
...Lucia, Antigua, St...
...But after the testy 19th-century sugar market ended the boom, most of the whites started to leave...
...has sought to protect the incipient democracies by offering military training and equipment...
...Of the leaders of the seven countries who joined the U.S...
...The joint state then came to be dominated by Labor Party and union leader Robert Bradshaw, a colorful character who alternated between his spats and 1931 Rolls Royce, and his Land Rover and full military garb, including binoculars...
...Kitts-Nevis, the region's newest nation, suggests that democracy on the islands, while highly vulnerable, is viable...
...A paucity of civilian institutions means that a determined cabal can seize power without much trouble...
...Kitts, it was judged that the residents would surrender because to them "the sovereignty of the island was nothing if their houses are burnt...
...The New Jewel Movement coup in Grenada, to cite one case, was carried out by 45 men...
...A recent one accused the Prime Minister of, among other things, "having his thumb up his ass...
...The absence of any fundamental conflict between PAM and the Labor Party is in great part due to the recognition on both sides that the country is almost wholly dependent on foreign trade and, consequently, on the generation of foreign exchange through its sugar exports...
...With the government now sole owner and employer in the all-important industry, Bradshaw was suddenly the chief executive officer responsible for the bottom line, the head of the union representing the workers, and the Prime Minister serving the needs of the entire nation...
...PAM-NRP loyalists are mainly the middle and upper classes...
...More significantly, his accomplishments in a relatively short period of time have been substantial...
...American foreign assistance laws bar aid to the police, but an exception has been made in the Caribbean, where special service units attached to the police force function as paramilitary squads...
...New schools and low-income housing have been built with public funds...
...It would be naive to believe that the Caribbean is immune to the Latin American habit of military power grabs...
...On the other hand, since the events in Grenada and Surinam, there appears to be a growing appreciation in the West Indies that the alternative to slow progress under democratic institutions is less likely to be more rapid revolutionary change than the reimposition of exploitive authoritarian rule...
...Only Antigua and Barbados have separate defense outfits...
...Last October's coup d'etat in Grenada and the U.S.-led invasion that it triggered, however, have again raised longstanding doubts about the stability of the West Indian parliamentary governments bestowed by departing Europeans . Can the Westminster model survive in miniature...
...Labor's nationalization of the sugar estates in 1975 led to the first cracks in its control...
...Moreover, it confronted a new coalition consisting of two parties that had been gaining strength, the People's Action Movement (PAM) andtheNevisReformationParty(NRP...
...Yet raising productivity would inevitably mean introducing labor-displacing, and hence unsettling, mechanization...
...Island states like St...
...Kitts, adjacent Nevis and Anguilla (a third island that soon quit the federation) complete internal self-government...
...Labor's bases of support are the sugar workers and older residents tied to it by tradition...
...Typically, it was the island's labor movement that spawned the drive for independence...
...monds, a doctor and lay preacher, Prime Minister...
...Not long afterwards, he negotiated an independence agreement with Great Britain that also gave Nevis considerable autonomy...
Vol. 67 • August 1984 • No. 14
