Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — April to June 2011

Published: 2 July 2011 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Dudus extradited: the Coke chapter closes for Jamaica’s government, opens for the courts: Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the Tivoli Gardens-based don whose extradition request from the United States had precipitated Jamaica’s worst political and security crisis in a generation, was extradited to New York on 24 June 2011 to face drug trafficking and firearms charges. Coke had surrendered to Jamaican police on 22 June, ending an extraordinary year in which the Golding government had first refused to sign the extradition warrant, then admitted in May 2010 to hiring a Washington lobbying firm to oppose the request, and then in May 2010 launched the Tivoli Incursion — a security operation in which more than 70 civilians died — to apprehend him. His extradition removes the immediate operational pressure on the Golding government but leaves the political damage unrepaired.
• Bruce Golding: surviving but scarred: Prime Minister Golding remained in office as of the publication date, having survived both the parliamentary inquiry into the Dudus lobbying contract and the immediate political fallout from the Tivoli Incursion. Within the JLP, however, pressure for his departure had been building through the quarter. His personal credibility — damaged by the admission that he had told parliament he knew nothing of the lobbying contract when he had in fact authorised it — had never fully recovered. Diaspora community organisations that had maintained a careful distance from Jamaica’s domestic politics found the Dudus affair’s combination of state violence and high-level corruption uniquely difficult to navigate.
• Arab Spring: the wider context of diaspora political engagement: The revolutionary wave that had toppled Tunisia’s Ben Ali in January, Egypt’s Mubarak in February, and was now producing an active NATO military campaign against Gaddafi’s Libya provided the broader geopolitical backdrop for Q2 2011. For Caribbean diaspora communities, the Arab Spring’s lesson was complex: it demonstrated both the power of popular protest movements and the brutal willingness of entrenched governments to use lethal force. The contrast with Jamaica’s own governance crisis was not lost on diaspora commentators.
• UK austerity: the community impact deepens: The Cameron-Clegg coalition’s austerity programme — now in its second year of implementation — was producing increasingly visible impacts in the urban communities where British-Jamaican populations were concentrated. Cuts to local government grants were cascading into reduced community centre hours, youth programme closures, and reduced provision of services for elderly Caribbean residents whose care needs were growing. The National Health Service restructuring under the Health and Social Care Bill was generating anxiety in communities where NHS provision was seen as a hard-won entitlement.
• Diaspora investment interest: cautious monitoring: The political instability of the past twelve months — from the Tivoli Incursion in May 2010 through the Dudus affair’s prolonged political fallout — had measurably chilled the diaspora investment enquiry level that JAMPRO and other agencies tracked. With Coke’s extradition and the prospect of political normalization, diaspora investors were watching carefully. The 4th Biennial’s returnee facilitation programme, twelve months old, was still being assessed for impact.
• Remittances: H1 2011 on track: Bank of Jamaica data for the first five months of 2011 placed Jamaica on track for annual remittances in the range of US$2.0 billion, maintaining the level of 2010 despite the continuing economic pressures on diaspora households. The quarter’s Mother’s Day and Fathers’ Day transfers had maintained their traditional spike pattern, providing a measure of the diaspora’s continued family commitment under financial pressure.

Introduction: The Dudus Affair Reaches Its Judicial Conclusion

The extradition of Christopher Coke to the United States on 24 June 2011 closed one chapter of the most damaging political crisis in Jamaica’s recent history and opened another. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and Caribbean diaspora media through 30 June 2011.

The Dudus Extradition: How We Got Here

The chronology of the Dudus affair had stretched across the entire Golding government’s term and was known in granular detail to the diaspora community, for whom its combination of political corruption, state violence, and the state’s apparent protection of an organised crime figure had been a source of profound unease. The 2009 US request for Coke’s extradition on drug trafficking and firearms charges had been met by the Golding government’s initial refusal and the revelation that it had hired Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a Washington lobbying firm, to argue against extradition. Golding’s admission that he had misled parliament about his knowledge of the lobbying contract — made before a parliamentary committee in May 2010 — had been the first major blow to his credibility.

The May 2010 Tivoli Incursion — the security operation to arrest Coke in the Tivoli Gardens community of West Kingston, in which official figures acknowledged 73 civilian deaths — had been the crisis’s most violent moment. Coke’s evasion of capture for another thirteen months, until his surrender on 22 June 2011, had kept the wound open. His extradition on 24 June, and the United States District Court proceedings that would follow, now transferred the affair’s primary locus to New York’s federal courts, removing it somewhat from Jamaican domestic politics while leaving its damage intact.

What the Diaspora Was Watching

For the Jamaican diaspora communities of New York, London, Toronto, and the Florida metropolitan areas, the Dudus affair had been simultaneously a source of political embarrassment — confirming the international narrative of Jamaican governance failure that community members spent considerable energy refuting — and a source of genuine concern about the governance of a country to which many maintained deep family, emotional, and financial connections. Remittances had not materially dipped, but enquiries to diaspora returnee support organisations about the security environment for potential returnees had shifted: questions about the political and governance climate had become more prominent relative to questions about property and taxation.

Arab Spring, Libya, and the Diaspora Lens

NATO’s military campaign against Gaddafi’s Libya — which had begun with the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 no-fly zone on 17 March and had expanded into active air support for rebel forces — was generating complex debate in diaspora communities about the legitimacy and limits of international intervention. Jamaica’s Caribbean Community (CARICOM) peers had taken varied positions on the Libya intervention, and Caribbean diaspora communities in the US and UK were processing the contradiction between their support for the Arab Spring’s democratic aspirations and their historical scepticism about Western military intervention in the Global South.

We report next from 2 October 2011, when the full impact of Q3 athletics season, including Usain Bolt’s defence of his IAAF World Championship titles in Daegu, South Korea in late August, will be known.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources include Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 July 2011.

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