Election ‘cliffs’ facing Barbados and Grenada

KINGSTON, Jamaica - THIS week, as Jamaicans brace themselves for severe belt-tightening because of the accord to be signed between the Government and the IMF, two incumbent parties in the Eastern Caribbean will be struggling to avoid becoming one-term administrations. The governments facing this survival "political cliff" — while Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's ruling People's National Party (PNP) struggles against its very challenging "fiscal cliff" — are those of Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart in Barbados and of his Grenadian counterpart Tillman Thomas. Within a year of each other, both the United Workers Party of Prime Minister Stephenson King in St Lucia and the Jamaica Labour Party Administration of short-lived Prime Minister Andrew Holness were to be restricted as one-term administrations with the electoral victories scored, respectively, by Kenny Anthony's Labour Party and Simpson Miller's PNP.