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CIAO DATE: 04/03
Caribbean Alert: Global Issues Shadow Small Country Elections
Douglas W. Payne *
Hemisphere Focus: 1998-2000
Series VIII, Issue 5
March 22, 2000
Overview
The elections held in Dominica on January 31st and in St. Kitts and Nevis on March 6th reflected the struggle of small island nations in the face of a globalized economy and international crime.
The new Dominica Labour Party (DLP) government has promised to end a controversial passports-for-purchase program, but must deal with the collapse of the critical banana industry and questions about Prime Minister Rosie Douglas' anti-Western links.
The St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) headed by Prime Minister Denzil Douglas easily won reelection, but only after drug trafficker Charles "Little Nut" Miller gave up a four-year fight against extradition to the United States during which he threatened to kill American veterinary students on St. Kitts.
Drugs and corruption remain central concerns in Suriname, where elections on May 25th are unlikely to relieve that country's congenital instability, and where former dictator Desi Bouterse, convicted on drug charges in the Netherlands last year, remains strong.
Dominica
Prime Minister Edison James called elections in January 2000 amid mounting questions about his government's handling of the country's Economic Citizenship Program.
For much of the 1990s Dominica, like a number of small Caribbean nations, has provided foreigners with passports in exchange for investments totaling millions of dollars. At the end of 1999, there were an estimated 1,000 such citizens, largely from Russia, China, Europe, and the United States, with most residing outside Dominica.
U.S. and British law enforcement agencies say that this nation of only 80,000 has made itself vulnerable to penetration by Russian and Chinese organized crime and international money launderers. In November 1999, Canada detained several Chinese carrying passports from Dominica on suspicion they were involved in an immigrant smuggling ring, then threatened to implement visa requirements for citizens of countries with citizenship for sale.
The DLP made the program a central campaign issue, claiming that James's United Workers Party (UWP) administration had undermined Dominica's sovereignty and was turning the country into "a center for international crime." The DLP also hammered the UWP on alleged corruption and nepotism in the tourist industry, particularly in relation to a proposed $100 million airport capable of servicing full-size passenger jets.
The UWP countered that there was no evidence that any of the economic citizens were criminals and promoted its record of building new homes, schools and roads, and economic growth of about 3.5 percent in 1999. James also questioned the source of the DLP's funding, underscoring a perennial concern in the Caribbean where campaign financing regulation remains virtually nonexistent and unsavory foreign influence common.
Meanwhile, DLP leader Rosie Douglas, a Canadian-trained political scientist, former Marxist, and Caribbean Black Power leader, continued to project the center-left image he adopted during the 1990s. He touted his relations with moderate European social democrats—Tony Blair's British Labour Party helped prepare the DLP's manifesto that advocated "an economy of enterprise"—and promised the business community in Dominica easier access to financing.
The UWP entered the contest holding 12 of 21 seats in parliament, to the DLP's five. The remaining four belonged to the conservative Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), which held power from 1980 to 1995 under Eugenia Charles and is now led by former diplomat Charles Savarin.
Crime and corruption concerns evidently swayed a significant portion of the electorate as the UWP retained only nine of its seats, while the DLP doubled its count to ten, one short of a majority. The DFP won the remaining two. Turnout fell to about 60 percent, from 65 percent in 1995, part of a continuing trend of increasing voter apathy in the English-speaking Caribbean.
Prior to the elections, the DLP had cozied up to the DFP, its once bitter enemy, and only days after the vote the two parties had agreed on a coalition government headed by Douglas, with Savarin given the tourism portfolio in the new cabinet.
Rosie Douglas: Many clues, few conclusions
Although the 58-year-old Douglas seems to have mellowed, he remains proud of his radical past and has maintained his friendships with Cuba, Libya, and Iraq—links which once led to a 15-year ban from the United States. In a profile of the new prime minister by Mark Fineman of the Los Angeles Times, Douglas even readily acknowledged the closest he has come to a regular job: the decade and a half he headed Mataba, a Libyan-based organization that financed and trained guerrilla movements in Africa until it was disbanded five years ago.
Douglas pledged to seek new investments from Libya and other old allies, but said he would also seek closer economic relations with Europe, Canada, and the United States. He insisted that his government would not be anti-West, noting that the United States. provides most of Dominica's 200,000 annual tourist visitors.
Some analysts in Dominica believe Douglas's radical bent will be tempered by a generally conservative society that is almost 80 percent Roman Catholic. Others note that Dominica's economic problems will serve to rein him in. Douglas himself said after the elections that he was not in a position to "pick fights" with the United States or anyone else, saying that "our economy is so vulnerable."
After taking office, Douglas repeated his vow to end the economic citizenship program. But the loss of income will hurt given the collapse of Dominica's critical banana industry following the WTO ruling against European preferences for Caribbean growers. Meanwhile, with a gross domestic product of just $234 million, the economy continues to stagger under a nearly $200 million debt and unemployment of at least 20 percent.
St. Kitts and Nevis
On February 13th, Prime Minister Denzil Douglas (no relation to Rosie) called elections four months early, hoping to capitalize on the achievements of his SKNLP government in new housing, lowering telecommunications costs, and improving physical infrastructure. The problem was that citizens of this tiny two-island nation were more concerned by the increasingly erratic behavior of Charles "Little Nut" Miller, who just a week earlier had walked into the office of The Observer in St. Kitts with four other men to rant and threaten staff with a gun because the newspaper had published a photograph of him.
Less than a week after Douglas announced elections, however, Miller was arrested by police on weapons charges. Douglas said that while appearing before a judge, Miller had expressed a willingness to surrender to U.S. authorities, thereby ending a prolonged extradition battle and handing Douglas a huge political prize on the eve of the March 6th vote.
Miller, 39, was indicted in 1995 in South Florida for allegedly smuggling a ton of cocaine into the United States during a three-month period in 1994, and U.S. law enforcement agencies said that he presides over a trafficking empire that moved huge amounts of drugs from Colombia to the United States. Twice a court in St. Kitts had blocked his extradition, and in 1998 U.S. officials claimed Miller threatened to kill American veterinary students at Ross University on St. Kitts if the courts ruled in Washington's favor.
Miller built a local business network that included a hotel, a restaurant, and import-export operations, and was thought by foreign law enforcement agencies to be untouchable on St. Kitts where, according to a 1998 article in Newsweek, he had helped finance the victory of Douglas and the SKNLP in the 1995 elections.
Miller was also indicted in 1994 for three drug-related murders in St. Kitts, including a police superintendent and the son of the then deputy prime minister, but three trials ended in hung juries amid charges of jury tampering. The scandal contributed to the fall of the conservative People's Action Movement (PAM) government, which had held power for 15 years.
Born Cecil Connor in St. Kitts, Miller had once been a member of the notorious Shower Posse based in Jamaica—so-called because it "showered" its enemies with bullets from Kingston to New York. After being arrested in the United States. in the 1980s and testifying against former cohorts in a Miami crack-house massacre, he vanished into the witness protection program, surfacing again in St. Kitts in 1991 as Charles Miller.
"Little Nut" gone, Douglas sweeps
Douglas has long denied having any links to Miller and has claimed, in turn, that his opponent, PAM leader and former prime minister Kennedy Simmonds, had helped secure two new passports for Miller upon his return to St. Kitts. Simmonds denied the charge and countered that Douglas had refused to honor an agreement Simmonds had made to return Miller to Jamaica to serve a life sentence on a murder conviction there.
Charges and denials continued to fly back and forth between the contenders during the election campaign. But most ordinary citizens and the tourism-minded business community appeared to be simply glad that U.S. agents had removed Miller to a Florida jail, even if it remained unclear what exactly the Douglas government had done to get rid of him after appearing powerless for so long.
One government official suggested that Miller had decided to waive extradition "because jail is harder in St. Kitts than in Miami." Others suggested that Miller might have been influenced by a recent ruling in St. Kitts that renewed the possibility of court-ordered extradition. Neither scenario seems sufficient to explain Miller's sudden turnaround. Miller, awaiting trial in Florida, has provided few clues.
Nonetheless, it's clear that Miller's departure greatly helped the SKNLP retain power. Simmonds' charges of economic mismanagement against the ruling party and the PAM's promises to lower tariffs and distribute land and houses failed to impress as the SKNLP swept all eight St. Kitts seats in the 11-member parliament (up from the seven won in 1995). In the contest for the three Nevis seats, the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) led by Premier Vance Amory won two and the Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) the other.
The PAM had hoped to win enough seats to team up with the CCM in a coalition government. Following the vote, the PAM alleged there had been widespread fraud linked to faulty voter registration. It was unclear, however, whether the party had any solid evidence or whether it would lodge a formal challenge in the courts.
Douglas, 47, now appears able to address pressing economic problems with little opposition. The $192 million debt, in a nation of only 45,000, is greater on a per capita basis than that of Dominica, while the important sugar industry continues to lag badly. There are also the lingering effects of five hurricanes in four years, including the recently announced closure of the premier Four Seasons Resort on Nevis which will put about 750 people out of work in a population of only 10,000. That could exacerbate traditional tensions between the two islands—Nevis claims the federal government continues to give it short shrift in budget allocations—which led to a failed but strong showing by CCM-led secessionists in an August 1998 referendum.
Suriname
The weak, fragmented government of President Jules Wijdenbosch, one-time political understudy of former dictator Desi Bouterse, nearly fell in June 1999 amid a collapsing currency and mass demonstrations. Wijdenbosch held on only after announcing new elections for May 25, 2000, a year earlier than constitutionally required.
Bouterse, meanwhile, whom Wijdenbosch dismissed from his cabinet a year ago, was convicted in absentia last July and sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Netherlands court, which determined that he headed a cartel which had shipped two tons of cocaine to Europe during the 1990s. The 54-year-old former strongman nonetheless remains one of the most powerful people in Suriname where he seems legally untouchable.
Suriname, which became a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1995, was referred to as more of a "criminal enterprise" than a nation by former U.S. Senate investigator Jack Blum in the Washington Post, on February 17, 1998. Today, according to the newly released annual drug certification report by the U.S. State Department, the country remains a conduit for South American cocaine destined for Europe and the United States with strong evidence of money laundering as well.
In early March, Dutch customs officials discovered 13 kilos of cocaine in Surinamese diplomatic pouches accidentally run over and broken open by baggage carts at an airport in the Netherlands. In February, a Brazilian congressional committee said that it had obtained evidence that the Surinamese ambassador to that country was involved with Bouterse in moving cocaine through Brazil as part of "the so-called Suriname cartel."
Bouterse remains chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP), the vehicle through which Wijdenbosch came to power in the 1996 elections. When Bouterse announced that he himself was running for president in May under the banner of the NDP, Wijdenbosch formed his own Democratic National Platform 2000 party to seek reelection.
The Bouterse-Wijdenbosch split has benefited the New Front, an unwieldy coalition of traditional, ethnically-based parties. In a recent survey by the Institute for Service, Research and Study Guidance (IDOS), Suriname's top polling outfit, Bouterse and Wijdenbosch were both trailing. However, the political landscape in this racially complex nation remains highly volatile; unwritten rules continue to apply more than written ones, and Surinamers have learned to expect just about anything.
Douglas W. Payne has covered Latin America and the Caribbean since the early 1980s, reporting on elections, political transitions, and human rights conditions. He is the author of the CSIS Western Hemisphere Election Study Series reports on the 1999 Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda elections; the 1998 St. Vincent and the Grenadines elections; the 1997 Jamaica, Guyana, and St. Lucia elections; the 1996 Suriname and Nicaragua elections; the 1995 Trinidad and Tobago elections; and the 1994 Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines elections. He is also the author of Emerging Voices: The West Indian, Dominican, and Haitian Diasporas in the United States (CSIS 1998); Storm Watch: Democracy in the Western Hemisphere into the Next Century (CSIS 1998); and Democracy in the Caribbean: A Cause for Concern (CSIS 1995). He has written for Harper's magazine, DoubleTake magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Dissent magazine, the Washington Post, the Jamaica Gleaner, Carib News, the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. Back.
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