Police lift this tree trunk from the road in Pondside, St Thomas yesterday as they clear the road of debris placed there by demonstrators participating in the Jamaica Labour Party-organised islandwide protest. (Photo: Karl McLarty)

Commerce was largely brought to a standstill across Jamaica yesterday and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Bruce Golding afterwards declared his call for a day of protest against rising prices, and what the JLP sees as failing governance, a resounding success.

"Today was certainly not business as usual," Golding told a press conference, shortly after the 3:00 pm deadline he gave party organisers to end the protest. "Nowhere in the country was it that way."

But last night the government accused Golding and his party of causing disruption without advancing a dialogue on solutions, and suggested that the Opposition's aim was to embarrass the country and gain short-term political satisfaction and no real value to the country.

"The protests organised by the Opposition have only harmed the country, moving us in the direction of reduced output and activity," the information minister, Burchell Whiteman, said in a statement. "The negative impact will be felt not only domestically, but also internationally, raising questions about Jamaica's stability."

Jamaica Labour Party leader Bruce Golding is flanked by deputy leaders Audley Shaw (right) and Derrick Smith at a press conference yesterday. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

Business leaders said that the protests, which kept employees away from their jobs and consumers from enterprises, will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

"We can't regain tomorrow what we have lost today," said Beverly Lopez, the president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), the umbrella body for businesses here. "So that's a problem. We are hoping good sense will prevail and we would get back to normalcy."
The police arrested 35 persons, including the mayor and deputy mayors of two parishes, during the demonstrations.
One man was shot dead on Mountain View Avenue on the eastern side of Kingston, and a policeman shot and injured in Kingston during a gun battle. The police could not say whether the incident in the east of the capital was directly related to the demonstrations.

As JLP supporters blocked roads, severely impeding traffic during the nonetheless largely peaceful muscle-flexing by the Opposition, Prime Minister P J Patterson hosted a summit of Caribbean leaders in Montego Bay at which they signed-off on the details of Venezuela's initiative to provide cheaper oil to regional neighbours. Among Patterson's guests were the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

Ironically, Chavez's PetroCaribe initiative will provide a cushion for Jamaica on a commodity, the galloping cost for which the government has substantially blamed for higher prices for services such as electricity, bus fares and a range of other goods.

A road Block at Central Village in St Catherine. (Photo: Michael Gordon)

Whiteman, pointing to the PetroCaribe and other energy initiatives in which the administration is engaged, declared: "The Opposition knows. that the recent unprecedented increases in petroleum is a challenge which faces all oil-importing countries. Every sensible Jamaican knows that no government can do anything to bring down the cost of electricity, which is having a multiplier effect on prices in all sectors of the economy."

On Sunday, in announcing the protest, Golding had largely dismissed the administration's blaming of rising oil prices for inflation, which, for the first seven months of this year, was running at eight per cent and is likely to end the year at 15 per cent.

Yesterday, the Opposition leader, who took over the helm of the JLP in February, focussed primarily on the message he believed Jamaicans had sent to the government by staying away from their workplaces, schools and other activities.

In many areas of the country JLP supporters used debris, burnt-out vehicles, logs and old appliances as road blocks. In some cases they created bonfires.

However, crowds were minimal - a fact that Golding blamed on an apprehension of physical participation even among sympathisers. In the past, he said, demonstrations have turned violent.

"I think today was signally good because we have not had reports of the kinds of violence we have had in the past," he said. "I am not going to allow myself to be provoked by those who, because you didn't go out there and mash up the place, because you didn't burn down buildings, then it means that the protest is a failure.

"I am not going to allow myself to be provoked by that because that's not the route that I intend to lead this country, or to lead the people, or to lead the party."

However, the ruling People's National Party (PNP), in its statement on the day's events, highlighted the episodes of violence, and on that basis declared the demonstration "a dismal failure".

"(The protest) was anything but peaceful," the PNP's deputy general-secretary Colin Campbell claimed in his statement.
Significantly, Whiteman's statement on behalf of the government did not raise the issue of violence, although Golding told reporters that he would investigate every reported incident.

"By and large, the protesters co-operated with the police and the police co-operated with them," he said. "There were few instances where that did not transpire, and we are going to be investigating each of those cases to see exactly what happened."

On the private sector's complaint of lost productivity, Golding said: "I think we have to understand that this is a country that has achieved much of the progress that we have made by street action.

"(National hero) Paul Bogle had to take the streets from Stony Gut all the way to Spanish Town. Business people have to understand that in fighting for their rights, indeed in fighting for their own survival, sometimes they are going to be inconvenienced. We regret that, but sometimes it is necessary to advance the welfare of the people of Jamaica."

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