458. Telegram 5073 From the Embassy in Jamaica to the Department of State1
5073. Subject: Current Jamaican Assessment. For Assistant Secretary Rogers from Ambassador Gerard.
The following is a personal assessment perhaps suitable for light reading on a plane trip.
1. Prime Minister Manley is at the eye of a storm consisting of a series of fronts all building up and affecting each other in a confusing and unclear pattern.
2. He is 51 years old and has been in power since 1972. While he has effected considerable change as advertised in his book “The Politics of Change,” it has largely been in the breaking down of socio/economic stratification and existing patterns, but he has not been successful in developing effective and workable substitutes. Jamaica today is in overlapping both economic and political crises. Manley has not, therefore, been able to provide himself with a solid enough pad from which to launch himself as the revered Third World prophet-philosopher-economist-reformer-teacher-leader he and his influential mother see himself as. He is having continued mild physical and less mild domestic difficulties. His current wife is a strong-willed leftist with personal political ambitions of her own and reportedly not much patience with Manley’s always-extensive extracurricular amorous activities. It is my view that Manley is at the moment a singularly frustrated man with an extra-severe case of the “fifties” syndrome. Some of his closer friends and observers continue to suggest that some psychological problems which he has had in the past are recurring more frequently and are now interfering with his ability to make rational judgements.
3. While his perception of the problems of Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the Third World and his understanding of the demographic and social pressures involved may be not far from the truth, his grasp of business and development economics is tenuous at best. His assess [Page 1175] ment that he is “living inside a time bomb with 60 percent of the population under 30 years old and 30 percent of these unemployed” and his conviction that special concessions and attention must be made to this group, can hardly be questioned, but his virulent alienation of the entrepreneurial middle class as well as foreign corporations with the means and capability of providing more jobs certainly can be questioned. This, coupled with a constant jingoistic elevation of the level of expectation of the desperately poor majority, dangerously shortens the fuse on the bomb.
4. What is unclear is the degree to which Manley is a slave of his own rhetoric, the victim of advice he has received from a series of what the British High Commissioner terms “third-string laborite pinkos” (n.b., the bauxite levy scenario was masterminded by some of these), or simply sincerely and honestly concerned, but weak, vacillating, and amateurishly served. I am inclined to the latter. There is a deep split in his Cabinet and other close associates between the more conservative “liberals” and the leftists, most of whom are indistinguishable from party-line “scientific Socialists” or Communists. Manley currently seems to be lending his ears and tongue more often to the latter group and unable or unwilling to control their actions.
5. The Interlocking Crises:
A. Economic: A desperate shortage of foreign exchange resulting from fuel prices, declining bauxite and other exports, a stagnant tourism industry, poor agricultural and industrial production resulting in increased imports, coupled with a stampeding inflation, all point to a major crunch by first quarter 1976. Government estimates of foreign short-term borrowing required for current account may be low at $150 million in the coming year. Jamaica credit is weakening and aid inflows declining owing to poor performance. Foreign private capital inflows are at a virtual standstill because of uncertainty and lack of confidence in government policy. No significant or effective measures have been taken by government to deal with inflation and related problems to date and no planning is evident for the future.
B. Political: Interrelated with the above is an accelerating breakdown of law and order in many sections of Kingston now spreading to all other urban concentrations. The Jamaican tradition of politically-motivated, executed, and protected violence and terrorism exacerbates the problem. Police and military forces are traditionally fragmented and inadequate to deal effectively with the situation. At the root are the difficulties of a Labor government in dealing effectively with labor. Authorized and unauthorized strikes coupled with 100 to 500 percent or more wage raise demands are endemic and epidemic. Manley has so far been unwilling or powerless to establish guidelines or to discipline the major unions on which both political parties are based. The Opposi [Page 1176] tion union (BITU) has, if anything, been more restrained and responsible than the government NWU, but the outlook is not encouraging despite constant last-minute government interventions to maintain essential services.
6. The GOJ has recently made some overtures, rather naive in presentation and content, to the USG dealing with their economic problems. These have received what was characterized in a recent Intelligence Summary as a “cold shower.” The $64 question is what alternatives are open to Manley. I have not seen him since the massive Cuban build-up in Angola and am not aware how this may affect his great “friendship” with Castro, or his stated assessment that Castro is separable from the Soviets, but the Jamaica-Cuban rapproachement seems to be percolating along on several medium burners, and I would not be surprised if Manley turned to Castro for advice and possible help. Whether the United States responsiveness in some measure to these dilemmas would retard or deflect this avenue is open to debate. “Au fond,” I believe Manley recognizes the inevitability of his economic dependence on the United States but will certainly make every effort to get out from under to any degree possible on any pretext and will increasingly yield to existing significant pressures from his leftist anti-United States associates. His opposition is presently weak and largely ineffective, although a significant proportion of the voting population is fearful of the Cuban connection and far from sympathetic to the directions Manley’s government is leading Jamaica.
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Summary: The Embassy reviewed the political situation in Jamaica for Assistant Secretary Rogers in advance of a visit to the island by Secretary of State Kissinger.
Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D750447–0498. Confidential; Niact Immediate. In telegram 303010 to Kingston, December 24, the Department provided press guidance relating to reports on Kissinger’s vacation in Jamaica, noting the Secretary would be there from December 26 through January 3 or 4. (Ibid., D750447–0709) A memorandum of conversation transcribes a January 3 meeting during which Kissinger and Manley discussed law-of-the-sea issues, bauxite negotiations, and the situation in the Middle East and Angola. (Ibid., P820117–0507)
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