KINGSTON, (Reuters) – Jamaica’s opposition narrowly won a general election on Thursday, with its message of deep tax cuts and massive job creation winning over voters weary of years of tough IMF-mandated austerity measures.
The Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) led by Andrew Holness was ahead in 33 of the 63 seats with most votes counted, according to the electoral council website.
The sound of airhorns filled the JLP’s headquarters in Kingston as a jubilant crowd of supporters in the party’s signature green waved flags and partied to dancehall music.
“The country wanted to be prosperous. The country wanted to exhale,” one supporter told local television, his name drowned out by the celebrations.
Holness, who is expected to be the Caribbean nation’s next prime minister, has promised to create 250,000 jobs on the island of 2.7 million people and do away with income tax for many wage earners.
Opinion polls before the election forecast victory for Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller after she returned Jamaica’s heavily indebted economy to growth and low inflation.
Despite its socialist past, her People’s National Party embraced spending cuts, wage freezes and harsh fiscal discipline as part of a $1.27 billion IMF bailout that has lowered the still daunting debt burden of more than 130 percent of GDP.
Simpson-Miller, 70, is Jamaica’s first female head of state. Inflation hit a 48-year low during her tenure. Falling oil prices freed up government funds in import-dependent Jamaica and the island’s GDP grew 1.3 percent last year, according to the World Bank.
However, unemployment is high at around 13 percent overall, and a whopping 38 percent for the young. While Simpson-Miller is credited with bringing stability, Holness’ optimistic message was more popular in the end.
Outgoing education minister Ronald Thwaites questioned Holness’ ability to deliver.
“Can those promises be kept? Will they be kept?” Thwaites said in an interview with local television.
Holness criticized the government’s adherence to austerity but refrained from sharp rhetoric against the IMF plan on the campaign trail.
He is not expected to significantly roll back the measures that restored investor confidence in Jamaica’s chaotic finances.
Holness briefly served as prime minister in 2011 after unrest due to a U.S. attempt to extradite drug kingpin Christopher “Dudus” Coke forced his predecessor to resign. (Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Paul Tait)
