"US monitored deadly raid for Jamaica" December 10, 2011|Associated Press
KINGSTON, Jamaica - A US surveillance plane helped monitor the deadly 2010 raid by Jamaican security forces to capture a fugitive crime boss, the prime minister said, reversing earlier government denials.
Meaning government lied.
A US P-3 Orion aircraft provided aerial surveillance of the effort to capture Christopher “Dudus’’ Coke, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told reporters Thursday. The raid set off a fierce battle in a West Kingston slum that left more than 70 people dead.
Related: Jamaican Drug Dealer Too Doped Up to Fight
Holness said the United States had no other role in the raid in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood.
How can we believe that denial now?
“We would want to reaffirm our position that the US government or its military did not participate in the operations in West Kingston,’’ he said.
His statement came a day after Minister of National Security Dwight Nelson said at a news briefing that the United States had not provided any surveillance of the raid, denying a report in The New Yorker magazine.
Holness said that Nelson made the statement in error because Nelson was not aware of the details of the US assistance.
Uh-huh.
Previous government statements had also denied any US role in the operation. The prime minister said the surveillance was coordinated between the Jamaican Defense Force and the “relevant government agency’’ in the United States.
“The United States government initially made an offer to provide surveillance and technical equipment,’’ he said. “We accepted and followed the normal protocol of exchanging diplomatic notes to provide the government-to-government cover for such assistance.’’
--more--"
"Jamaica’s youngest leader in tough re-election bid" December 30, 2011|By David McFadden
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaicans braved bottlenecks for as long as four hours yesterday to cast ballots in fiercely contested national elections.
Previous votes have been marred by bloodshed, but there were few reports of trouble at polling centers for the 63 parliamentary races contested by the center-right Jamaica Labor Party and the slightly left-leaning opposition People’s National Party.
The vote hit some snags as fingerprint scanners meant to stop people from voting more than once worked intermittently.
The People’s National Party has tried tapping into voter disillusionment, especially among Jamaica’s many poor inhabitants, and complained of the slow voting process yesterday. The party also alleged that some ruling party candidates violated rules by campaigning on election day.
Lisa Shoman, of the observer mission for the Organization of American States, said her team has not observed “any disturbances or any issues that would cause us any serious concern.’’
I forgot to grab the link? Oh well.
"Jamaica’s opposition wins elections in a landslide" December 30, 2011|David Mcfadden, Associated Press
On Jamaica’s rutted streets, the complaints have been chronic — home ownership is out of reach for most wage earners, the cost of electricity has skyrocketed, water service regularly fizzles out and decent jobs are scarce.
Fed up with chronic hard times, voters in this debt-wracked Caribbean nation on Thursday threw out the ruling party and delivered a landslide triumph to the opposition People’s National Party, or PNP, whose campaign energetically tapped voter disillusionment especially among the numerous struggling poor.
The win marks a remarkable political comeback for former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was Jamaica’s first female leader during her year-and-a-half-long first stint in office that ended in 2007. The 66-year-old known affectionately as “Sista P’’ reached out to Jamaicans as a champion of the poor with a popular touch.
“She cares about the ghetto people,’’ said Trishette Bond, a twenty-something resident of gritty Trench Town who wore an orange shirt and a bright orange wig, the color of Simpson Miller’s slightly center-left party, which led the island for 18 years before narrowly losing 2007 elections.
As word of her election win emerged Thursday night, PNP supporters shimmied and shouted in the capital, Kingston, and motorists honked horns in celebration as they tore down the streets....
Simpson Miller defeated Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who at 39 is Jamaica’s youngest leader and leads the center-right Jamaica Labor Party.
Holness said the defeat will prompt a time of introspection and reflection for party leaders to examine what went wrong....
Maybe the lying didn't help, huh?
Holness warned during the campaign that an opposition win would scare away foreign investment and dash hopes of economic progress....
Simpson Miller is beloved by her supporters for her folksy, plainspoken style. She became Jamaica’s first female prime minister in March 2006 after she was picked by party delegates when P.J. Patterson retired as leader. But she was tossed out of office a year later in a narrow election defeat.
This time around, she has pledged to lift debt-wracked Jamaica out of poverty, secure foreign investment, and create jobs. Specifics are few, however.
Her party will face deep economic problems in this island of 2.8 million people, with a punishing debt of roughly $18.6 billion, or 130 per cent of gross domestic product...
Veteran opposition lawmaker Omar Davies said one of the first things the People’s National Party will do is get “a true assessment of the state of the economy,’’ a dig at Holness’ party which was accused of rarely providing citizens with a clear picture of the island’s dire fiscal straits....
Simpson Miller has been a stalwart of the People’s National Party since the 1970s. She was first elected to Parliament in 1976 and became a Cabinet member in 1989. Partisans have long admired Simpson Miller as a Jamaican who was born in rural poverty and grew up in a Kingston ghetto, not far from the crumbling concrete jungle made famous by Bob Marley.
During her brief tenure as prime minister, her support waned amid complaints she responded poorly to Hurricane Dean and was evasive about a scandal regarding a Dutch oil trading firm’s $460,000 payment to her political party leading up to 2007 elections....
Simpson Miller's party, which experimented with democratic socialism in the 1970s, is still perceived as more focused on social programs than the slightly more conservative Labor. There are no longer stark ideological differences between the two clan-like factions that have dominated Jamaican politics since the onetime British colony began self-rule in 1944. Jamaica became independent within the British Commonwealth in 1962.
--more--"
Also see: Jamaican Jibberish
