‘Garvey would have been proud’
Professor Alvin Wint compares nation’s development to dreams contained in national hero’s party manifesto
Published:Monday | June 9, 2025 | 12:07 AMCarl Gilchrist/Gleaner Writer
Professor Alvin Wint piqued the minds of the audience attending the 14th Marcus Garvey Lecture at the St Ann Parish Library on Friday, questioning whether Jamaica’s first national hero would have been pleased with the nation’s development thus far.
Garvey’s opinion, Wint suggested, would have been based on the 1929 manifesto of his People’s Political Party (PPP), the island’s first such party.
“Marcus Garvey is an amazing hero for us,” Wint said. “Jamaicans must embrace their identity, build strong businesses and shape their own destiny, inspiring black nations to do the same. Marcus Garvey wasn’t just about being a visionary, he tried to implement the vision that he had in mind.”
Garvey, decades before Jamaica became independent, was an advocate for reforms across many areas and for the establishment of necessary systems.
These included universal adult suffrage, minimum wage, land reform, the creation of a Jamaican university, the establishment of a government-run electricity network, high schools in every parish, a national library system.
Garvey died in 1940, before several of the changes he sought were implemented.
However, since then, several of these have been addressed. Universal adult suffrage was granted in Jamaica in November 1944; the University College of the West Indies, now University of the West Indies, was established in 1948; every parish has at least one high school, an electricity grid has been established; the minimum wage was enacted in 1975 and is reviewed periodically; and a national library system was formed in May 1948, when the Jamaica Library Service was established.
Wint described Garvey as “brilliant”, based on the contents of the PPP’s manifesto, which touched on key elements that are important for small countries to become successful.
These elements are stability, along multiple dimensions such as political, macroeconomic and social; infrastructure development; education and training; and business facilitation.
BASIS OF SUCCESS
“There are other things that you can think about, but if you do those four things well as a small country, you are likely to be successful,” he noted.
Regarding political stability, Wint looked at how the system deals with close elections, using the 2016 general election as example.
“How does the system deal with close elections? In Jamaica’s case, you don’t have to guess and spell. In 2016, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won 33 electoral seats out of the 63 constituencies that were contested; the People’s National Party (PNP) won 30.”
He said that in St Ann South West, the JLP won by 120 votes, and took the St Mary South East seat with a 127-vote margin.
“If the PNP had won those seats, the PNP would have had 32 seats and the JLP 31. In a population of close to three million people, in 2016, 125 voters (61 from St Ann South West and 64 from St Mary South East) determined who would form the government of the country. This is probably, I can’t be definitive, but probably the closest national election in the history of the world.”
Wint said that despite the closeness of the election, there was civility between members from each party.
“And so, Jamaica’s record of a peaceful transfer of electoral power had faced a significant test and passed with flying colours.”
Concerning macroeconomic stability, Wint said Jamaica has had some very significant challenges for decades.
“In some respect, this came to a head in the 1990s. In the period 1990 to 1995, inflation in Jamaica reached 42 per cent.
“The debt-to-GDP [ratio] went from [the] 115 per cent that it was in 1990 to 140 per cent in 2000.”
Efforts, stretching back to the 1990s, to forge a national social partnership failed and it was not until 2013 that agreement was reached.
In the meantime, Jamaica’s debt-to-GDP ratio climbed to 144 per cent, the third-highest in the world.
“But through a process of shared commitment anchored in the social partnership processes, Jamaica has been able to, over the last decade, take its debt-to-GDP ratio down from 144 per cent to 72 per cent in 2023. At that level, Jamaica had a better debt-to-GDP ratio than 50 countries in the world, including Singapore. Garvey would have been proud!” Wint asserted.
In terms of social stability, he noted that the murder rate was down. In the area of infrastructure advancement, he noted the road development that has been taking place in the country.