KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Leader Mark Golding has described as “unconvincing” the reasons offered by the Jamaican Government for terminating the 50-year-old Cuban Medical Assistance Programme.

Golding addressed the matter on Tuesday during his contribution to the 2026/27 Budget Debate at Gordon House.

He said he had taken notice of Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ recent exhortation to fellow Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders to adopt a foreign policy of “principled realism”.

“I wondered uneasily to myself what that potentially self-contradictory concept meant to him, but it wasn’t long before its first manifestation emerged when the Jamaican Government unilaterally terminated the 50-year Cuban Medical Assistance Programme,” Golding said.

Continuing, he said the Foreign Affairs Minister, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, having told Parliament that the decision had “nothing to do” with pressure from the United States, “a few days later had her ministry subsequently issue a statement affirming that it is ‘widely known’ that the US has publicly raised concerns with the programme”.

Golding said Johnson Smith then articulated “unconvincing reasons as the purported justification for the Government terminating a programme which has done so much to help Jamaicans to have access to quality health services and the termination of which has left a massive, unfilled gap in health care delivery, especially in under-served areas”.

“For the record, we [the Opposition] thank the Government and people of Cuba for their 50 years of valuable and selfless service to the Jamaican people, and we join with other Jamaicans who regard this so-called ‘principled realism’ an act of spineless capitulation to external pressure, at the expense of the Jamaican people,” said Golding.

— Lynford Simpson