Caribbean & Central America - March 2022

*** ANTIGUA’S PREMIER EYES EARLY POLL. Prime Minister Gaston Browne, leader of the ruling Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP), hinted on his weekly radio programme on 19 February that there could be an early election. He went to the polls a year early in 2018 and it paid off. He is now looking for a third consecutive term.

The ABLP came to power in 2014 when it defeated the then-ruling United Progressive Party (UPP) by 14 seats to three in the 17-seat House of Representatives. The UPP, which held power for two terms from 2004, had the misfortune of having to deal with aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and in particular (after a year of resumed growth in 2012) with a dip back into recession in 2013, the year before it would be seeking a third mandate.

In 2018, the ABLP was luckier. There had been good growth in every year since it returned to power in 2014. And although there was a slowdown to 3.0% in 2017, after a robust advance of 5.3% in 2016, the prime minister went into the election promising a double-digit advance on the back of a US$90m port-expansion project together with a huge new hotel development in Barbuda. The electorate believed the prime minister, with the ABLP winning one more seat in March 2018 than it had done in 2014, to give it a 15-2 majority in the House of Representatives.

Now Browne is looking to repeat the trick, and he is even aiming for a clean sweep. Speaking on 19 February, he talked of winning 17 seats, adding: “I could call the elections next month and the Labour Party will win the elections.”

But the economic cycle hasn’t been as kind to him this time around. The rapid 7% expansion in 2018 dropped to 4.7% in 2019 after which came the catastrophe of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, producing a 20% collapse in GDP in 2020. The recovery in 2021 was a very tepid 1%, although this year should see a further 7% advance. That is probably as good as it’s going to get for now, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pencilling in 5.6% GDP growth for 2023, 4.4% in 2024, and 3.5% in 2025.

*** TRINIDAD MURDERS ON THE UP. In January, there were 50 murders in Jamaica, double the previous year’s figure for Trinidad & Tobago. This follows a 12% increase in murders in the country in 2021, taking Trinidad’s murder rate to 32 per 100,000 inhabitants, surpassed only by Honduras (38.6), Venezuela (40.9), and Jamaica (49.4) in the region.

The total number of murders in Trinidad & Tobago in 2021 was 448, up from 399 the previous year, however it was still below the record of 539 murders in 2019. In its review of the crime situation in Trinidad in 2021, specialist website InsightCrime wrote: “The ongoing economic crisis and spike in criminality in Venezuela, just a few nautical miles away, has severely impacted Trinidad and Tobago…”

Local criminologist Ramesh Deosaran, commenting on the January surge in murders, also blamed the economy and (in part) the crisis in Venezuela. He said that economic reasons were behind the surge rather than people “have mental illness or just plain wicked”. Deosaran also blamed the influx of foreigners, and not just from Venezuela. He said: “There are a lot of foreigners in the country, not only from Venezuela. People are forming gangs with their own here…We’re heading into a mafia country in the same way as in other countries. Immigration is a big contributor all over the world and here too.”

• Jamaica’s homicides

InsightCrime quoted Jamaica’s police commissioner, Major General Antony Anderson as saying that nearly three-quarters of Jamaica’s homicides in 2021 were gang-related.