In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, the island has entered a period of accelerated reconstruction, heightened executive urgency, and concentrated state power. Many welcome decisive leadership during a crisis; societies battered by disaster naturally crave efficiency and visible authority. Yet, history warns that national emergencies are fertile ground for institutional distortion and the quiet normalisation of political centralisation. Within this context, uncomfortable s

I must be getting old. Not only because I remember when a prime minister’s financial declaration was treated as a pro forma exercise in trust, but because I now watch Jamaica drift toward a template of governance that South Africans have already lived—and are still trying to escape. The comparison sounds provocative. Can the leader of a Caribbean island of three million be placed alongside the man who presided over Africa’s most industrialised economy? ...Read More Online