POLITICS-JAMAICA: Cabinet Shuffled as Government Eyes Elections

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Zadie Neufville

KINGSTON, Oct 24 2001 (IPS) - The justice and trade ministries have been shaken up in Prime Minister P.J. Patterson’s first Cabinet shuffle since his party won a third term in 1997.

Keith Knight, the embattled security and justice minister, has been reassigned, dislodging Anthony Hylton from his post at the helm of the trade ministry.

Human rights activists welcomed Knight’s reassignment but political observers questioned the removal of Hylton who, in addition to his Jamaican Cabinet post, headed the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) negotiating team at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Knight earned the ire of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International for presiding over a police force with one of the world’s highest rates of killings and for attitudes assailed by watchdogs abroad and at home.

“He was less than effective,” said Carolyn Gomes of the rights group Jamaicans for Justice.

In a move that former politician turned political analyst Bruce Golding described as “beneficial to the ruling Peoples National Party (PNP) rather than the country,” Patterson handed a merged foreign affairs and foreign trade portfolio to Knight while splitting his old ministry.

Peter Phillips, who earned a reputation as a hard worker as transport and works minister, is taking over the national security portfolio. Attorney-General A.J. Nicholson will head the new justice ministry.

Knight is the longest-serving member of the Cabinet and until now was the only one who had not been reassigned since 1989. Under intense public pressure for the rising murder rate, he consistently pointed to a fall in other crimes.

Patterson had hitherto resisted pressure from human rights lobbyists and opposition leader Edward Seaga of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), to replace Knight, one of the PNP’s most influential members.

In the last ten years, murders have averaged 750 a year, up from 414 in 1989. The number of slayings peaked at 900 in 1999 and reached 887 in 2000. So far this year, there have been 922 murders. Police attribute many to politically motivated crimes and gang wars.

However, the average year sees some 145 police homicides – a point over which human rights advocates have campaigned for Knight’s removal.

Knight has constantly pointed to the fact that the current average is less than half the more than 300 police killings per year during the mid 1980s.

Despite the crime problem, Phillips said he believes his predecessor “made important gains in modernising the whole apparatus of security and justice.”

In recent weeks, Phillips himself has drawn criticism from human rights groups for suggesting “extreme measures” are needed to solve the crime problem.

Those words could come back to haunt the new minister, said trade unionist Lambert Brown. “When the terrorist element in the police go out and terrorise people, people are going to remember that statement,” he said.

Phillips, however, said he was “not talking about curtailing the rights of Jamaican citizens. But all states recognise that extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary responses.”

Phillips has been widely described as the most successful of Patterson’s Cabinet. He has received accolades for rebuilding a state-owned bus service in the capital and for completing major road building and port development programmes.

While rights advocates will watch him for signs of progress in reining in the police force, business and other civic leaders are anxious that something be done to put a lid on crime and street violence.

Adolph Bennett, head of the Jamaica Teachers Association, said changing the minister is not the answer. “We have not yet given the competent authorities the resources to handle the situation,” he said.

Local media have speculated about Knight’s removal for several weeks but no one anticipated Hylton’s removal from the trade ministry. Instead, he has been given the mining and energy portfolio.

Media commentator Cliff Hughes said he believes Patterson sacrificed Hylton to pander to Knight’s ego and prevent problems at senior levels within the PNP. Citing major disagreements in several constituencies over representational selections, Hughes says Patterson’s “minimalist and conservative” approach to the shuffle could cost him the fourth term he seeks.

Patterson, however, has justified the shift on the grounds that “foreign affairs and foreign trade deserve to be led by one of experience, of stature in the field, able to command international acceptance.”

Other key Cabinet changes saw Public Utilities Minister Robert Pickersgill move back to his former job at transport and works. Horace Dalley, the junior labour and social security minister, is going to head the land and environment ministry. Colin Campbell, junior minister for industry, commerce and technology, will become minister of information, working out of the Prime Minister’s office.

Patterson’s shuffle was largely in response to vacancies created last month, when Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Land and the Environment, Seymour Mullings, was named Jamaica’s ambassador to Washington and the Organisation of American States.

Maxine Henry-Wilson, the PNP general secretary, and Paul Robertson, the foreign minister, left the Cabinet to work full time for the party in preparation for general elections scheduled for next year. Robertson will be the campaign director.

Mullings replaces Richard Bernal, who now heads the Regional Negotiating Machinery, the body charged with leading the Caribbean lobby at international trade talks.

Patterson did not name a new deputy premier. Hughes saw this as an attempt to preserve stability in light of keen competition for the post among Phillips, Water Minister Karl Blythe, and Tourism and Sport Minister Portia Simpson.

Simpson, often described as the most popular Jamaican politician, has filled in for Patterson when the premier has traveled and seems destined to continue to do so.

A recent newspaper poll suggested the PNP would win a fourth term were Simpson to head the party.