Go, sista

摘要

To hold an election on December 29th, sandwiched between Christmas and New Year's Eve, always seemed odd. But Andrew Holness, Jamaica's new, young, prime minister, wanted his own mandate after succeeding Bruce Golding as head of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (jlp). For his whimsy, the voters duly deprived him of his job, after a mere ten weeks. They gave a landslide victory to Portia Simpson Miller, whose People's National Party (pnp) took 42 of the 63 seats. In office since 2007, the conservative jlp had grappled with Jamaica's twin scourges 01 economic stagnation and violent crime. Mr Golding's government entered a standby agreement with the imp, but proceeded to miss most of the targets, especially that for trimming the public-sector wage bill. A three-year recession has technically ended, but growth has been mainly in bauxite mining and has been imperceptible to the public. In May 2010, under intense American pressure, Mr Golding sent police and troops into Tivoli Gardens, the stronghold of a leading gangster and jlp supporter, Christopher "Dudus" Coke. The operation left 73 civilians dead, many of them apparently shot in cold blood. The murder rate has come down, but it remains frightening by any non-Jamaican standard.