Suchergebnisse

In February and March 1986 there occurred the most recent in a long line of political disturbances involving university students in the Commonwealth Caribbean. The immediate issue was the imposition by the government of Jamaica of a charge on Jamaican students for part of the cost of their tertiary education. After receiving representations from the university authorities and instituting an enquiry, the Jamaican government retreated slightly and reduced the level of the new charges to be imposed on the students

Jamaica and Cuba are close neighbours sharing a climate, topography and history. Yet they have gone their separate ways politically - the one westwards, the other eastwards - to the point where it is difficult to discern which of them is the more firmly integrated within its chosen geopolitical system. For all this, they have never been able to keep totally separate their roles in world and regional affairs. The gravitational pull of their common Caribbean destiny has been too strong. The result has been that for a quarter of a century (1959-86) they have danced an uneasy 'pas de deux'

The process of Caribbean integration suffered a severe jolt following the divisions which emerged between the member states of CARICOM in the aftermath of the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983. Since that date meetings of ministers and heads of government have continued, but nobody denies that CARICOM faces severe challenges. It needs to restore the working of its free trade system, it needs to establish forms of functional cooperation, and it needs to work out a collective response to US reassertion of hegemony in the whole Caribbean region

In January 1985 in Jamaica there occurred two days of demonstrations in protest against a sharp increase in the price of gasoline. Seven people were killed and some fifteen shot and wounded. The protests expressed genuine anger at the squeeze which the Seaga government had been imposing on the Jamaican economy in the name of structural adjustment. The main opposition party sought to subdue the demonstrations for fear that they would prejudice its electoral strategy. The government tried to blame subversives and communists. Other commentators found this explanation inadequate and pointed to the deeper underlying problems of the Jamaican economy. Both sides know that the economic crisis will continue and will generate further political tensions