In the 1970s, when Michael Manley was more ideologically driven than focused on domestic policies which drove economic growth in his New International Economic Order appeal, he extended the begging bowl to developed nations and, with an intellectual flourish, solicited their assistance in diverting more of the income from their goods and services to countries like Jamaica.

Manley was more cognisant of the present condition of the poorest among us than concerned with moving the nation, as a whole, towards economic viability and future success. In that he saw no clash between his ideology of ‘democratic socialism’ and devising policy that would eventually irk those corporate interests and others who had the economic clout to drive future growth or, in an effort to turn him back, supply funds to those whose political interests were more in tune with their own.

Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore later criticised the policies of Michael Manley in his book From Third World to First and launched a scathing criticism of Jamaicans, suggesting that the last time we worked hard was in the times of slavery. It was the belief then that…

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