your management costs.
 GBS: Regional politics in the Caribbean
in the 1980s are hard to read. Some observ-
ers emphasize the growing conservatism of
regional politics: Seaga, Compton, Charles,
Cato, Chambers and the like. Do you sense
a conservative mood in the Caribbean?
 JFM: Well, one must be careful about
how one defines a conservative. I think that
Americans tend to see the Caribbean and
the rest of the world in terms of the good
guys and the bad guys. You tend to look for
simple and safe answers. But they are not
always the correct answers. My party is the
center party and we believe in the politics of
change. I don't think there is much to be
conservative about in the Caribbean where
the majority of people are poor, ill fed, ill
educated and demoralized by lack of op-
portunity. You, yourself, have drawn refer-
ence to how similar we are to Haiti. Well you
could just as well call Baby Doc a conserva-
tive leader. What is there in Haiti to be con-
servative about? So in St. Vincent what is
there to be conservative about? How can
anyone of sense and conscience support a
conservative leader like Cato? Our land is
crying out for change. 1, myself, am a busi-
nessman; I own a hotel operation, as you
know, but still I know we must increase op-
portunities at all levels for everybody, lift the
standard of living all around and make this
country more rewarding for all our people.
Only in this way can we fight the communist
trend which so worries the Americans.
 GBS: But there are, in fact, serious trem-
ors in the region. Leaving aside Central
America, how would you interpret events in
Grenada and Suriname?
 JFM: The lessons of Grenada and Sur-
iname are very important to the entire Ca-
ribbean. First of all I would like to state that
events in neither of those countries hap-
pened just like that. One has to look at the
history. One has to remember that Bishop
in Grenada is a product of Gairy, one of your
conservatives if there ever was one. One has
to remember that at the time of indepen-
dence in Grenada, every organization in
Grenada worth calling itself an organization,
including the Chamber of Commerce, was
protesting independence under Gairy. But
the British government wanted to shrug its
shoulders and be rid of the Caribbean so
they said, "okay Gairy, go ahead." Mean-
while the people of Grenada were crying out
for an end to corruption, an end to mis-
management, an end to rigged elections.
They were complaining about how all the
institutions of government had collapsed,
the public service commission, for exam-
ple. There were no proper checks and bal-
ances in the system. There were human
rights abuses. Well, Bishop emerged out of
that. So the first and most important lesson
of Grenada is not to be found in Bishop
himself but in what he came out of. Regard-
ing the Grenada situation, at present the


most abhorrent aspect is the number of
people held for a long time in jail without
trial. And the lack of freedom of the press to
criticize what is going on there. 1, myself,
read the newspaper that was banned after
one issue, The Voice, and found it a rather
innocuous publication. What is of para-
mount importance in Grenada, as far as I
am concerned, is what kind of constitution
they will come up with. I might add that I am
quite disillusioned with the Westminster
system which was bequeathed to us by the
British. I'm anxious to see what Bishop will
do. He's got a brilliant opportunity to come


The latest fashion is
import restriction by
licensing. But this
licensing is a racket; it
doesn't operate under the
principle of free and open
competition. You've got to
be a party supporter to get
a license.


up with a constitutional model that we may
yet envy, but will he muff it? The airport
project in Grenada is a commendable one,
and I think US criticism of Grenada is mis-
pitching quite considerably when it criti-
cizes the airport. Every Grenadian who
hates communism still wants that interna-
tional airport. You don't know how much
both St. Vincent and Grenada suffer by hav-
ing to rely on the Barbados connection.
Even the right-wing government in Antigua
supports the Grenada project. I went on that
airport site with Gairy's ministers in 1968
when they were looking for funds for the
project. Don't worry about that airport. The
Cubans won't be able to move it any more
than the Russians took away the Aswan
Dam.
 GBS: And Suriname?
 JFM: Well, those guys in Suriname are
something else. They're an awful lesson.
And you know, we needn't think that a result
like that is possible only from a single cause.
These corrupt regimes that cheat the peo-
ple-and their friends, the parasites that en-
joy temporary reward-had better bear in
mind the prospect of another Bouterse
somewhere, sometime, with a hatchet.
 GBS: Are we witnessing the collapse of
the Westminster model in the West Indies
and if so, what are some of the problems
indigenous to the West Indies that make the
Westminster model problematic?
 JFM: I think the recent election in Britain


foretells the collapse of the Westminster
system in Britain itself because if you look at
the results of the last British election, Mrs.
Thatcher does not represent the majority of
British people. The Social Democratic Al-
liance got about 25 percent of the vote and
the Labour Party a bit more than that. So
Mrs. Thatcher with 42 percent, and the op-
position with more than 50 percent, shows
that although they have a very powerful
government in Britain, it is unrepresentative
of the people. Now, that system may be
okay for Britain, where there are fine strong
traditions, where there is a very efficient sys-
tem of justice, where there is the best press
opinion in the world. (I have seen news-
papers from many countries, and I don't
think the level of press opinion anywhere in
the world is as meticulous as it is in Britain.)
So you have a country with beautiful checks
and balances that can function. It would be
difficult for Mrs. Thatcher to ruin Britain. But
in the West Indies, when you give that kind
of power to a politician as in our case, with
the present government having a massive
majority among only 33 percent of the elec-
torate, you are begging for trouble. I have
been paying a lot of attention to the type of
systems functioning elsewhere and I am
quite impressed with what goes on in
France and Germany. In the French system
you insure that the government and the
president are elected by more than 50 per-
cent of the people, and in Germany you
have a system which was devised at the end
of the Second World War to stop the Hitlers;
that is commendable. We need to examine
all these models. I agree with the Social
Democrats in England who say that the
economic and social progress of a country
is largely dependent on its constitutional
system, and the decline of Britain over the
years has been in part affected by the West-
minster system compared to the advances
that have been made in France and
Germany.
 GBS: What about the Cubans? Where do
they fit into regional and Vincentian
politics?
 JFM: Well, I doubt that the Cubans can
serve as any constitutional model at all. The
Cubans are an element of force and a lot of
propaganda. One aspect of the Cuban
scene that is not sufficiently publicized is the
marked dependence of Cuba in terms of
millions of dollars a day by which the Soviet
Union props up the Cuban economy. If the
Cubans are a model of a kind of develop-
ment, they are a model of dependence.
Cuba is being kept in the Caribbean and
Latin America as a show piece. It has no
inherent strength of its own. But neverthe-
less, it is an area of propaganda interest in
the region. And, of course, its military ca-
pacity cannot be ignored.
 GBS: What would you want the people of
the United States to understand about your
country and the Caribbean?


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