prime minister
Personal Information
Born Percival Noel James Patterson in St. Andrew, Jamaica, in 1935, the son of a farmer. Divorced, two children.
Education: Graduated with honors degree in English, University of the West Indies, 1959; bachelor of law degree, London School of Economics, 1963; passed bar in Britain and Jamaica.
Career
Prime minister of Jamaica, 1992-; attorney and lifelong political organizer and politician. Party organizer, People's National Party of Jamaica, 1958-60; party vice president, 1969-82; party chairman, 1983-; member, Jamaican senate, 1967-70; member, Jamaican House of Representatives, 1970s and 1980s; minister of industry, foreign trade, and tourism, Government of Jamaica, beginning in 1972; deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, 1979-80, 1989-90; deputy prime minister and minister of development, planning, and production, 1990-91, resigned, 1992; elected prime minister of Jamaica, 1992 in special election caused by the death of Prime Minsiter Michael Manley; reelected 1993, 1997.
Life's Work
A successful leader in a troubled Caribbean country with a tradition of white political leadership, P. J. Patterson is the first prime minister of Jamaica to have been born of two black parents. Implementing the free-market reforms that swept the region and much of the Third World during the 1990s, he proved to be a skillful and steady chief executive, bringing new prosperity to an island nation that, despite its well-known tourist industry, has suffered considerable economic difficulties since gaining independence in 1962. Groomed to be prime minister by his charismatic predecessor Michael Manley in 1992, Patterson, as leader of the People's National Party (PNP), won Jamaica's 1993 elections and led the party to victory once again in 1997 even after the imposition of austerity measures designed to put the economy on a firmer footing.
Percival Noel James Patterson was born in 1935 in St. Andrew, Jamaica, the son of a farmer in the island's rural western region. He excelled as a student in primary and high schools and earned an honors degree in English at the University of the West Indies. While still a student he became politically active in the then British colony that had a history of colorful and contentious politics.
He worked for the PNP, which in the 1960s and 1970s supported socialist programs aimed at improving the quality of life of the impoverished Jamaican masses through government control over industry, and forged ties with such leaders as Cuba's Fidel Castro. Patterson, a newly minted college graduate, decided to continue his education in London, England. After obtaining a law degree in 1963, he passed the bar in Britain and Jamaica. When he returned to Jamaica, he found that his education made him a valuable asset to the PNP, which was struggling for ascendancy over its longtime rival, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), in the wake of independence from Britain.
Patterson rose through the ranks of the PNP, becoming a party vice president from 1969 to 1982, campaign director for the general elections of 1972, 1976, and 1989, and chairman, winning election to the Jamaican parliament, and assuming leadership of various government ministries in the 1970s and 1980s. He began to work increasingly closely with Manley, a natural leader of mixed-race background whose populist rhetoric led the PNP to victory in several 1970s elections. When the Jamaica Labor Party, a rightward- tilting party that cultivated a close relationship with the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, came to power in the 1980s, Patterson emerged as a leader of the opposition, resisting the cuts in social programs pushed by the JLP and its leader, Edward Seaga.
Manley, Patterson, and the PNP returned to power in 1989, by which time the steam had gone out of the international socialist movement, and Patterson was named deputy prime minister and finance minister. He assumed the unenviable task of rescuing the Jamaican economy from the inflation and national debt that had accumulated when the foreign investment Seaga had courted failed to materialize. The government took the step of devaluing the country's currency, a move that pleased international financiers but wreaked havoc on ordinary Jamaicans, who often depended on the contributions of relatives who had emigrated to the United States or Canada.
Patterson resigned from his posts in a 1991 scandal involving the improper granting of tax relief to the multinational Shell Oil Company. But the allegations did little damage politically, and when Manley announced his resignation due to ill health on March 15, 1992, Patterson was widely viewed as a strong candidate to succeed him. He won election as party leader (in Jamaican's parliamentary system, modeled on that of Great Britain, the leader of the majority party in Parliament become prime minister), and was sworn in as prime minister on March 30.
Although the nation's economy was in crisis, Patterson confidently predicted a rapid improvement in Jamaican's fortunes. He could have remained in office until 1994, but instead sought a mandate by calling elections for March of 1993. With Seaga as Patterson's opponent, the campaign took on some racial overtones (Seaga was born in Boston and was of Lebanese-Jamaican ancestry), but also turned on economic issues; in the words of the Economist, "[Mr.] Patterson draws support not only from the poor, but also from the rapidly expanding class of entrepreneurs and small investors who, in a booming stock market, have done well from his government's version of popular capitalism." Patterson and the PNP easily won re-election, taking 61 percent of the popular vote and 54 seats in the 60-member House of Representatives.
Dubbed the "Fresh Prince" after American star Will Smith, Patterson met with success even though Jamaica's economy lagged behind those of other Western countries in the early and middle 1990s. Through a devaluation that impelled Patterson to appeal for aid from expatriate Jamaicans, the currency was stabilized, and Patterson won praise for what the Economist called a "consultative brand of politics" that stood in dramatic contrast to the rough-and-tumble governing styles of Jamaica's past leaders. Some attributed this welcome change to Patterson's rural background, and to the fact that he had risen to power outside of the culture of political violence that plagued the city of Kingston, the nation's capital and largest city.
Indeed, election-related violence emerged as an issue in Patterson's 1997 campaign; he seemed to represent for many Jamaicans a new stability in the country's leadership. After his convincing victory, he was quoted in Jet as saying, "I regard this (victory) as a clear signal to all who are too blind to see that the country wants an end to political violence." The election was monitored by an international team of peacekeeper-observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Jamaican- descended U.S. general Colin Powell, and Patterson's victory gave the PNP an unprecedented third term in power.
By 1998 Patterson seemed to be in a position where he could continue to improve the lives of ordinary Jamaicans. He listed education, improved water, electricity, and sanitation services, and new roads as priorities for his upcoming term. "It is also very critical to win the fight against crime and the scourge of drugs," he was quoted as saying, again in Jet. The leader whom the Economist called "a reticent man in a loud-mouthed country" had emerged as a respected black leader for the 1990s and beyond.
Further Reading
Books
- Current Leaders of Nations, Gale, 1998.
- Black Enterprise, December 1992, p. 22.
- Economist, March 21, 1992, p. 48; March 27, 1993, p. 47.
- Financial Times, April 7, 1993, p. 4.
- Jet, April 4, 1994, p. 6; January 12, 1998, p. 8.
- Facts on File World News CD-ROM, Country Profile: Jamaica; also issues of January 9, 1992, April 2, 1992, and April 8, 1993.
— James M. Manheim
