Caribbean & Central America - November 2022

*** DOMINICAN OPPOSITION LEADER RESIGNS. On 10 October, Lennox Linton, the leader of Dominica’s opposition United Workers Party (UWP), publicly announced his resignation. Linton had been leader of the UWP since 2013, leading it in two losing election campaigns, in 2014 and 2019, against the Dominica Labour Party (DLP). In 2019, the UWP won just three out of 21 seats in the House of Assembly. Francesca Joseph has taken over as interim leader, hoping to be confirmed in the post at the upcoming party conference. Founded in 1988, the UWP has only held power for one term, from 1995-2000. It lost the 2000 election by 9-12 seats despite winning the popular vote. 

*** US TO FIGHT ILLEGAL ARMS FLOW. In interview with The Gleaner newspaper on 11 October, Jamaica’s national security minister, Horace Chang, said that the US had agreed to work harder at preventing the flow of illegal American to Jamaica and the wider region. Chang said: “The US offered to extend itself to work with these Caribbean countries…None of our countries manufacture firearms and yet the ill effects of their proliferation and the contribution to gang violence and transnational criminal activities permeate our respective territories and are responsible for more than 70% of homicides in Caricom [the Caribbean Community]. It is within this context that it is important to disrupt and prevent illegal firearms and ammunition from passing through our borders.” Chang said that the problem, which has been around for a long time, has been spreading into the Eastern Caribbean and “is generating significant levels of criminal violence across the region”. In Chang’s opinion, the spread of illegal weapons throughout the region has the potential to disrupt, or even prevent, the progress of Caricom’s Single Market and Economy (CSME) which enables the free movement of goods, labour, and services within the 15-member organisation. The renewed commitment from the US was given during a three-day meeting with US agencies including Homeland Security; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); and the Agency for Narcotics. Chang said: “They would like to increase their activity significantly in the region to begin the process of mitigating this really serious challenge in the Caribbean region”.

In a related development, on 3 October, the governor of the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI), John Dakin, blamed deterioration in the territory’s security situation on Jamaican gangs. Speaking about the advances of a particular Jamaican gang, Dakin said: “Using military grade high velocity weaponry, the vast majority of the murders in September have been targeted and linked to this enlarged and now emboldened gang trying to remove who they believe are the local drug and arms smuggling competition. Those local criminals, already established here, are fighting back.” Dakin said “we are now engaged in fighting trans-national serious organised crime”, and to combat this an anti-gangs team of 24 detectives was being set up with UK support. He added: “Its forward elements arrive shortly. It will embed in our Force – not only delivering immediate effect – but building local capability. With all of this combined, we will have all-but replicated the UK's Counter-Terrorism Policing model. Through it, gangs will be brought to justice, not just suppressed.”