The IMF and the Foreclosure of Development Options: The Case of Jamaica

Abstract

On October 30, 1980, the Michael Manley government in Jamaica was removed from office by an electoral coup d'etat. The people of Jamaica, after four years of battering from steeply rising prices, growing unemployment, shortages of basic commodities, widespread violence and political assassination, and a relentless anti-Communist campaign, voted for "deliverance" from their suffering and their trauma. The change in the attitude of the people was all the more dramatic since in 1972 they had voted in effect to reject the model of unequal, dependent capitalist development through foreign investment and transnational corporations that the government they have now voted into office is determined to restore. Furthermore, in the 1976 election they had resoundingly endorsed the program of social and nationalistic reforms being undertaken by the Manley administration.

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