Edward Seaga

Edward Philip George Seaga ON PC (born May 28, 1930) was the fifth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 1980 to 1989 and Leader of the Jamaica Labour Party from 1974 to 2005. He served as leader of the opposition from 1974 to 1980 and again from 1989 until January 2005. His retirement from political life marked the end of Jamaica's founding generation in active politics; he was the last serving politician to have entered public life before independence.

Early life

Seaga was born in 1930 in Boston, Massachusetts to Jamaican parents of Lebanese and Scottish descent. His parents Erna and Phillip George later returned to Jamaica when Edward was only three months old, and baptised their son in Kingston's Anglican Parish Church on December 5, 1930. Erna was the daughter of Elizabeth Campbell (maiden name), daughter of John Zungaroo Campbell (East Indian descent)and Elizabeth Heron (Scottish). Young Seaga attended primary schools in Kingston and St. James, before continuing his secondary education at Wolmer's High School for Boys, in Kingston. He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1952.

Political background

He entered politics as a member of the appointed Legislative Council, the upper house of the pre-independence legislature, in 1959. He made his mark in one of his first speeches as a legislator on the theme of 'The Haves and Have Nots'. In the 1960s and 1970s he served as minister of development and welfare in the government of Sir Alexander Bustamante and as minister of finance under Hugh Shearer, gaining, according to the 1981 yearbook of Merit Students Encyclopedia, a reputation as a "financial wizard". He became leader of the JLP in 1974, after becoming Member of Parliament for Western Kingston in 1962.

During the 1960s, he was a music promoter and owned and operated the West Indies Records Limited (WIRL) label. He sold this concern to Byron Lee in 1968 to reduce distractions from his political career. Lee renamed this label Dynamic Sounds.

Initially seen as a man of the left when he began his political career, Seaga moved to the right when he took over the JLP from Hugh Shearer in 1974 in a sustained attempt to wrest political power from the rival People's National Party led by Michael Manley. In this regard Seaga was accused by opponents of helping to foment a culture of political terror that bordered on civil war in the 1970s. By early 1978 the long and bloody campaign leading to the October 1980 election was renewed in earnest. It was at this time that Seaga made it clear in both Washington and Kingston that he would align Jamaica with the United States, break diplomatic relations with Cuba (which the Manley administration had actively promoted), and abolish the levy that Manley had placed on bauxite, which had angered the mainly US bauxite companies. It was at this time, too, that he spoke often about Jamaica needing "a military solution." The tenor of his speeches and activities in the United States led to his being censured by the Jamaican parliament in 1979.

Seaga and the JLP won the 1980 election by an overwhelming majority - 57 percent of the popular vote and 51 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. He was subsequently one of the first foreign heads of government to visit newly elected US president Ronald Reagan early the next year. With John Michael Geoffrey Manningham Adams (also called Tom Adams) of Barbados, Seaga was one of the architects of the Caribbean Basin Initiative sponsored by Reagan. He delayed his promise to cut diplomatic relations with Cuba until a year later when he accused the Cuban government of giving asylum to Jamaican criminals.

Seaga supported the collapse of the Marxist regime in Grenada and the subsequent US-led invasion of that island in October 1983. On the back of the Grenada invasion, Seaga called snap elections at the end of 1983, which Manley's PNP boycotted. His party thus controlled all seats in parliament. In an unusual move, because the Jamaican constitution required an opposition in the appointed Senate, Seaga appointed eight independent senators to form an official opposition.

Seaga lost much of his US support when he was unable to deliver on his early promises of removing the bauxite levy, and his domestic support also plummeted. Articles attacking Seaga appeared in the US media and foreign investors left the country. Rioting in 1987 and 1988, the continued high popularity of Michael Manley, and complaints of governmental incompetence in the wake of the devastation of the island by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, also contributed to his defeat in the 1989 elections.

Seaga remained leader of the Jamaica Labour Party until January 2005. He made several attempts to regain the Prime Ministership, running unsuccessfully against Manley's successor P.J. Patterson in three more elections. After an overwhelming defeat in the 1993 election and a meagre improvement in the 1997 election, he came close to winning the 2002 election, but stepped down as party chief in 2005 at the age of 74, to take up an academic post as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies in Mona. His replacement as JLP leader was Bruce Golding.

From 1965 to 1996, Seaga was married to the former Marie ("Mitsy") Constantine, who held the title of Miss Jamaica 1964. The couple raised three children together, Anabella, Andrew and Christopher, divorcing after thirty years due to irreconcilable differences. In 1997, Seaga married Carla Vendryes, thirty years his junior. She gave birth to their daughter, Gabrielle, in 2002, making him a father for the fourth time, at the age of 72.

External links

• Government of Jamaica Information Service Biography Page