Jamaica: a Beacon for Democracy or a Powder Keg?

from Jill Westby Mile Miles, representing the Youth Forces for National Liberntion (Jamaica) quite soon. The article below is taken from a recent YFNL statement: "Jamaica is fast approaching boiling point. Strikes, riots and political vitlence are becoming the order of the day, The policies of both major political parties are becoming more exposed and wmpopular - for behind their show case of prosperity and development primitve backwardness and poverty remain the lot of the masses of our people....The rulers of Jamaica have launched a new counter revolutionary offenSive since 1962. On the one hand, the Jamaican Labour Party Administration has pledged itself to the service of U.S. imperialism to smother the revolution in blood. On the other hand, the People's National Party has been forced to take up the banner of social-~ ism which they themselves have already trampled underfoot. eeelt was reported in New York in October last year that Donald Sangster, Minister of Finance and Acting Prime Minister, was "quite satisfied" with his talks with banking and insurance chiefs in Canada. Sangster saids "I set out to sell Jamaica and to tell them what a wonderful country Jamaica is." With a sinister bluntness Sangster admits his crime. So he and his colleagues have certainly sold Jamaica - right into the pockets of the World Bank, the United States treasury and the Anglo-American monopolies. We ask Sangster what is wonderful about the conditions of the squatters and the unemployed....of the thousands of underpaid and exploited workers and the illiterate and downtrodden peasantry....about a country that can provide only the mental asylum, the alms house and the prisons for their so-called under-privileged masses, and forces hundreds of thousands...to seek bread in strange and hostile lands? The only things wonderful in Jamaica at the moment are the millionaires! tourist resorts enjoyed by foreigners; the millions in profits taken out by imperialism; the fabulous limousines and mansions that politicians like Sangster enjoy and the life of luxury and uselessness lived by the..parasites. All these "wonderful things" are created by the sweat and blood of the Jamaican workers who for over 300 years have been going without proper food, housing and medical care, Many are yet to enjoy the "privilege". of running water and electricity, and many thousands more are yet to see their children given the opportunity of. a proper education. eeebut the Youth Forces for National Liberation call upon the people to HNITE = forget old party loyalties - and close their ranks against the common enemys The politicians are fast losing the confidence of the peoples their parliamentary antics and ballot-box Western democracy are exposed as a big hoax, a fraud and a deception....as the politicians lose control over the people, their usefulness to the capitalist class is diminished. So the next logical step the capitalist class will take is to replace their discredited and impotent politicians with raw military force and possibly a direct U.S. imperialist take-over, THIS WE MUST PREVENT. The mobilising of the people into a united revolutionary third force to remove and replace the existing two corrupt parties is the popular call and the historical necessity in Jamaica at the moment. Only a revolutionary third force can unite the nation and place political power in the hands of the peasants and workers. We call upon patriots, all socialists, and all people in the towns and in the country to rally to the Patriotic Revolutionary banner and to save Jamaica from the old set of corrupt politicians."