Give Seaga credit where credit’s due

THE EDITOR, Sir: THIS BEING the 20th anniversary of the passing of former Prime Minister Michael Manley, there are many scholarly works that have emerged to pay homage to his legacy.

Admirers often make poor objective observers, and it gets even more strained when much depends on a recollection of matters of historical record. That such historical records exist does constrain biographers to thread carefully, lest the empirical record create dissonance for them.

Which brings me to the recent work by Dr Brian Meeks, former professor in the Department of Government at the UWI, Mona, and chair of Africana studies at Brown University in the USA.

Professor Meeks penned an article in the latest edition of Jacobin — a left-leaning American magazine — commemorating the life and legacy of Michael Manley, Jamaica’s fourth prime minister. I take issue with one particular paragraph:

“Edward Seaga’s pro-capitalist government failed to make any serious impact on unemployment or the country’s development.”