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When Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced his resignation last month, the only surprise was that it took him so long. Since last year, Golding, leader of the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), has been embroiled in one of the worst scandals to hit Jamaica since it won independence five decades ago. His government faces accusations that for months it refused to arrest and extradite Jamaican drug lord Christopher "Dudus" Coke to the U.S. because of Coke's long and close relationship with the center-right JLP. When Golding, who denies the charge, finally did agree to collar Coke in May of 2010, it sparked a lengthy, armed street battle between security forces and Coke supporters that left 76 people dead.
Now, fearing the Coke scandal could wreck its chances in new parliamentary elections that have to be held by December of 2012, the JLP is betting that more youthful leadership can distract Jamaican voters and clean up the venal house that Golding, 63, leaves behind. On Wednesday, October 5, JLP leaders anointed 39-year-old Education Minister Andrew Holness as their new leader and therefore Jamaica's new Prime Minister. But Holness already has a big decision of his own to make as soon as the JLP ratifies him at its convention next month: whether or not to call early elections ahead of Coke's Dec. 8 sentencing hearing in the U.S., when the kingpin might name Golding and other JLP bosses among his mafia's political protectors. "Holness will be staring at Jamaica's shadow of criminality from the start," says Jamaican-American lawyer David Rowe, adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami.
(See "Behind the War on Jamaica's Streets")
Rowe and other Jamaica watchers say pulling the sun-splashed island out from under that lawless darkness, even more than solving its heavy economic problems, has to be any new PM's priority. Heavily armed gangs like Coke's Shower Posse...
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