Jamaica has lost one of its foremost political leaders.
Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga has died. Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, announced his passing.
Seaga, 89, was battling cancer and its complications. He passed at approximately 1:00pm today.
He is survived by his widow, Carla, whom he married on June 14, 1996.
They have one daughter, Gabrielle, who was born on September 16, 2002.
He had three older children – Christopher, Andrew, and Anabella – with his first wife Marie Elizabeth “Mitsy” Constantine, whom he married on August 22, 1965.
Mr. Seaga has the distinction of being the longest-serving member of Jamaica’s Parliament.
He was the last remaining member of the legislature that drafted Jamaica’s Constitution in 1961.
Mr. Seaga was the fifth Prime Minister of Jamaica, from November 1980 to February 1989. He led the Jamaica Labour Party for 31 years from 1974 to 2005. Seaga was either intensely loved or hated.
For many of his supporters, he was the nation builder who shaped many of Jamaica’s institutions of today. For others, he was a hated figure.
His political opponents demonized him as the man who built Jamaica’s most feared political garrison, West Kingston. And in particular its fortress – Tivoli Gardens.
Edward Phillip George Seaga was born on May 28, 1930, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States to Philip George and Erna Seaga.
His parents returned to Jamaica when Edward was still a baby.
The young Edward Seaga was educated at Wolmer’s Boys’ School in Kingston. From there he earned a place at the US Ivy League, Harvard University.
There, he said, his interest in public service was kindled. After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Social Sciences, Edward Seaga returned to Jamaica to study medicine at the University of the West Indies, at the urging of his mother.
But the spark for public service that was kindled at Harvard, was further stoked three months into his time at UWI.
This led him to withdraw from UWI and move to Buxon Town in rural St. Catherine. A community Edward Seaga said he fell in love with.
A young Edward Seaga left Buxon Town and moved to West Kingston, where he began exploring the different social strata of the Jamaican society.
Moved by the poverty he witnessed in West Kingston, he vowed to change the circumstances of the poor.
This heralded the birth of Edward Seaga the politician.
Edward Seaga’s political career began in 1959 when the founder of the Jamaica Labour Party, Sir Alexander Bustamante, nominated him to serve in the Legislative Council.
The council later became the Senate. He was only 29 years old. The youngest member ever appointed to the Legislative Council.
During his time in the Council, Mr. Seaga participated in drafting the Jamaican Constitution.
In April 1962, Edward Seaga was elected Member of Parliament for West Kingston, a depressed and poverty-stricken waterfront area in the capital city.
Historically, it has been the oldest settlement in Kingston for poor, working-class residents, many of whom were unemployed.
He initiated the redevelopment of what was pejoratively dubbed “Back-a-Wall.” It was a notorious large slum in West Kingston.
He led and pioneered its transformation into a community with high rise housing apartments, schools and several amenities, including health and maternity centers.
This new and improved community became Tivoli Gardens.
But Tivoli Gardens, according to Mr. Seaga, was doomed from inception.
The community also developed a violent reputation for gun violence and an enforcer of Seaga’s political will.
As Edward Seaga argued, Tivoli Gardens did come under attack, but it also gave as good as it got.
In the turbulent and violent politics of the late 1960s into the turn of the 21st century, under Edward Seaga’s leadership, Tivoli was feared.
It developed a notorious extra-judicial system of its own governance dominated by Dons and enforcers.
Immediately after winning West Kingston in the parliamentary elections of 1962, Seaga was appointed to the first post-independence Cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante.
He was the Minister of Development and Welfare, with responsibility for all areas of planning, social development and culture.
Following the 1967 General Elections, Mr. Seaga was appointed Minister of Finance and Planning and in 1974 he became Leader of the JLP, a position he held for 30 years.
Edward Seaga became Prime Minister of Jamaica following the bloody General Elections of October 30, 1980.
He successfully led the challenge to Michael Manley’s democratic socialist push of the 1970s.
The JLP victory over the People’s National Party is still its greatest electoral triumph. Of the 60 seats in the House, Seaga’s JLP won 51 to the PNP’s 9. The Labour Party won a massive 59-percent of the popular vote as the country turned to Seaga to rescue Jamaica from the social, economic and political turbulence of the decade of the 1970s.
Seaga continued as Prime Minister until February 1989 when Michael Manley led the PNP back to power.
He held the West Kingston seat for 43 consecutive years until he retired in January 2005, making him the longest-serving Member of Parliament in the history of Jamaica and the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Edward Seaga is credited with being the architect of the financial and planning infrastructure of post-independent Jamaica, as well as developing its arts and craft industry, and awareness of national heritage.
In addition to being one the founding fathers in the framing of Jamaica’s Constitution in 1961, Edward Seaga is recognized as the initiator of some of the most important political, parliamentary and constitutional reforms in the country.
He initiated a re-write of the human rights section of the Constitution, to provide for a Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
He created the post of Public Defender.
Mr. Seaga made other significant contributions to the development of independent Jamaica in several other areas.
These include the economic and financial infrastructure of the country through the creation of banks and tax reforms. He inspired the planning and development of rural and urban townships, parks and markets and waterfront development in the main coastal towns and cities.
Mr. Seaga is also credited for being the architect of a wide range of social programmes which expanded training in human resources, aided small enterprises and protected the poor and vulnerable.
Some of those social programmes include the establishment of the Human Employment & Resource Training, H.E.A.R.T, now the HEART Trust NTA; the Golden Age Home for the elderly poor; the Institute of Mass Communication; later renamed Caribbean Institute of Media & Communication, CARIMAC; the National School Feeding Programme; Things Jamaican – craft development and the Food Stamp Programme for elderly poor and lactating mothers.
He also established most of the institutions geared towards building cultural awareness and national identity and heritage.
These include the Jamaica Festival; the Creative Production and Training Centre, CPTC; the planned development of heritage sites in Port Royal, Spanish Town, Seville.
He led the development of the Order of National Heroes. He’s also credited in having Marcus Garvey’s body return to Jamaica and being named the country’s first national hero.
And through his lobby for new international pacts, Jamaica initiated several far-reaching programmes with entities such as the UNESCO International Fund for the Promotion of Culture (Culture Bank), the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Caribbean Democrat Union and CARIBCAN.
While he’s best known for his political career, Edward Seaga was also a major pioneering force in the birth and development of the Jamaican music industry.
In 1955 he supervised the recording of an album of ethnic Jamaican music.
He continued to produce recordings by several artists and in the late 1950s founded his own label, the West India Records Limited, WIRL.
He signed Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, Slim Smith, along with the duo Joe Higgs and Roy Wilson, who scored the massive 1959 ska hit “Manny Oh” that sold more than 30-thousand copies for Seaga.
The WIRL became the most successful record company in the West Indies.
After being elected in 1962 as a Member of Parliament, he sold the company to Byron Lee. It was renamed Dynamic Sounds.
Mr. Seaga released a collection of Jamaican music covering the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s in November 2012. It was called Reggae Golden Jubilee Origins of Jamaican Music.
In his twilight years, Mr. Seaga spent his time engaging in research and writing, as well as teaching.
He also assumed leadership in academia at the University of the West Indies, the Institute of Jamaica and the University of Technology.
Edward Phillip George Seaga. Nation builder. Fearless political leader and fighter. Driven and stubborn. Controversial. Polarizing. And yet respected and feared.
