Edward Seaga's announcement that he will retire, by mid-January, as parliamentary representative for West Kingston, is not altogether surprising.

Indeed, Mr Seaga had several months ago announced that he was stepping down as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, finally relenting to the long campaign for him to go.

Although he had said that he would remain as MP for West Kingston it did not seem that, at 74, it was a job that he would have held for long. Moreover, it had been floating around for a while that Mr Seaga's active involvement in politics would have been incompatible with his assumption of a Chair in the Department of Government at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.

We expect that over the next several years there will be myriad analyses, scholarly and otherwise, of Mr Seaga's nearly 50 years of involvement in Jamaica's politics, including his more than four decades of representation of West Kingston.

The assessments of his contribution to Jamaica and to the Caribbean, we expect, will be as varied as his personality is complex.

In that regard, we expect that they will be honest, helping us to better understand a man who has had a profound impact on our lives over a very long time and whose actions will have helped to shape the society for future generations.

Up to now, we have largely had a two-dimensional, monochromatic image of Edward Seaga. Usually, he is either painted good or bad. If there are any subtleties, they are in the degrees of goodness or badness.

On the good side, there are those who swear by Mr Seaga as the good manager and prime minister who pulled Jamaica back from the brink of communism in the late 1970s and put the country on the road to economic recovery.

But Edward Seaga's critics berate him as authoritarian and autocratic. More recently, for reasons other than his handling of the Jamaican economy, they belittled his financial savvy.

The critics have also accused Mr Seaga of stifling dissent in the party which he has led for three decades. They claim that he alienated many talented people. He is blamed for the party's notorious divisiveness.

This newspaper does not believe Mr Seaga to be wholly good or bad. He is neither devil nor saint.

We have, in the past, argued that, as a leader he has displayed profound weaknesses and we have suggested that he clung for too long to the leadership of the JLP.

Yet, it has been, and remains, our view, that, on balance, Mr Seaga has made a far more positive contribution to Jamaica than negative. He has been the architect of many important Jamaican institutions.

Mr Seaga has also displayed a deep understanding of the sociology of Jamaica, which has fed into his political work, and his contribution to the cultural advancement of the country is often unknown or understated.

It is this full, multi-dimensional, multi-coloured image of Mr Seaga which we hope to emerge in the analyses, which will help us to better understand where he fits into the evolution of Jamaica.

We expect Mr Seaga to help us to see this more clearly through his own writings, which we assume will be part of the mandate of his university Chair. Not least of the issues which we expect him to tackle, as ex-politician and sociologist, is the emergence of a man of Arab extraction in an overwhelmingly black country, to Jamaica's top job.

Mr Seaga may be ending his involvement in the political process, but his future work may help to make better sense of that politics and how we can map a route to a better future.

The Audacity of Art

Marjorie Whylie to receive Stella Gregory Award

Traditional Thanksgiving offerings at EVITAS