JAMAICA'S Disastrous Journey: How Are The Mighty Fallen Says AJ Nicholson
Former Foreign Minister and former Attorney General A. J. Nicholson
KINGSTON, Jamaica, November 8, 2026 - By AJ Nicholson | All kidding aside, viewed from an emotional or more so, from an objective standpoint, does it not boggle the imagination how our government leaders could conclude that voting against threatened starvation of the Cuban population would be incompatible with their quest for US-Cuba dialogue or their preference for Cuba to adopt a different form of government?
How does our government reconcile seeking reparations for atrocities done to our forbears with refusal to condemn atrocities inherent in genocidal action or threatened starvation of an entire population? Bewildering!
Jamaica's horribly incurable display at the United Nations concerning our doorstep neighbour has placed our country's image within the compass of: 'How are the mighty fallen'!
The Norman Manley-led PNP government publicly condemn apartheid atrocities in South Africa.
Culture pioneer Louise Bennett could hardly have found a more powerful and appropriate example illustrative of "Jamaica likkle but wi tallawah"!
Since our Independence, the Cubans, pound for pound, have taken second place to none in generosity rendered to our people, and a refusal to condemn their threatened starvation represents the culmination of a disastrous decade-long downhill journey actively pursued by Jamaica's government.
To traverse that journey, we begin by reminding ourselves of the image of Jamaica that the present regime inherited in early 2016.
After having been kicked almost to the brink of being a pariah state caused by the sorry Dudus-Manatt episode in the previous government, with no foreign leader even glancing in Jamaica's direction, the country's image gratifyingly came to glow during the Simpson Miller-led administration to an extent that the largest number of heads of state and government visited our shores, making for a record among all regimes since independence.
Markedly, however, to the practised eye, even before the change from the PNP government, there were some extremely worrying warning signs coming from the Opposition JLP leadership.
In 2015, amid the glow of Jamaica's image attracting highly favorable international attention, Edmund Bartlett, then Opposition Spokesman on foreign affairs, along with others in the leadership, struggled for months to show to the world how Jamaica, through its foreign ministry, was 'wickedly mistreating one of its citizens wrongfully incarcerated in Qatar'.
The records of the foreign ministry would show that assertion to be wickedly false!
The Jamaican citizen, convicted for sexually assaulting a minor, having served his five-year sentence and deported, had the red carpet laid out by Opposition Leader Andrew Holness and Bartlett in his welcome in the Jamaica Government VIP lounge, no less, at the Norman Manley International Airport.
Wonder whether those leaders visualized the Qatari authorities, and the wider world, applauding Jamaica for embarking upon such a gross, indefensible course of action?
After the new government took over, when asked on public media why he had pursued such a misguided project, Bartlett's reply was: "it's politics".
Jamaica's image gratifyingly came to glow during the Portia Simpson Miller-led administration to an extent that the largest number of heads of state and government visited our shores.
Years later, heart-rendingly, that led to its cratering in the form of the cataclysmic Cuba non-vote, preceded by a ministerial declaration that "we are not a walking out country", peremptorily dismissive of a walkout in the UN by almost 100 countries in protest against the horror of genocide.
The downward trajectory gathered momentum in 2017. The Dominican Republic authorities had taken to deporting Black people of Haitian heritage with ties only to the DR, rendering thousands of them stateless, thereby attracting regional and global condemnation for acting shockingly in breach of International Human Rights law.
Lo and behold, of all countries across the globe, the Jamaican government, in those circumstances, inexplicably chose to invite the Dominican Republic president to our shores to regale him with the highest honour that Jamaica can bestow upon a foreigner, the Order of Excellence.
Jamaica's image regionally was perhaps thought to have reached its nadir in 2020 with its ugly treatment of Venezuela.
Under the leadership of Presidents Chàvez and Maduro, Venezuela's life-saving energy assistance to our country across regimes, and to other states within CARICOM, has been priceless.
A shameless display of ingratitude shown to the landmark generosity extended to Jamaica proceeded with our head of government joining US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Jamaican soil in public condemnation of "the illegitimate, destabilizing Maduro dictatorship".
Moreover, not only within the region, but there was also no escape from Jamaica's image being irreparably damaged within the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 2022, with no vacancy in the seat of Commonwealth Secretary General, of the 56 independent countries within the Association, Jamaica alone was goaded into embarking upon an unprecedented challenge to displace then Secretary General Baronness Scotland, success of which would have disrespectfully deprived one of our African sister states of their due place in occupying the chair.
Days before the prime minister announced the challenge on april fools day, the Jamaican delegation at a Caricom meeting in Belize gave no indication of Jamaica having any intention of disturbing the current situation.
The totally out-of-line step elicited a stinging public rebuke from Antigua and Barbuda prime minister Gaston Browne that: "I think Jamaica's proposed candidature for Commonwealth Secretary General is a monumental error..."
Just as it has been within the region and the Commonwealth, in like manner in the wider international arena there has been a series of awkward displays of monumental errors, exemplified in stark fashion in relation to the complicated Israel-Palestine issue.
Jamaica's United Nations delegations consistently tied up themselves in knots in an unexplained, ridiculous pattern of non-voting, to the annoying extent of refusing to vote in favour of allowing a Palestinian leader to deliver his address at the New York venue.
An insightful, compelling admonition to resist careening downhill had early come from Citizen of the Caribbean, David Comissiong, with his widely-disseminated December 2017 open letter to the government:
"Any Jamaican government that is so lacking in racial pride and respect for humanity and civilized values that it would confer a national honour on President Medina of the Dominican Republic - a political leader who is currently presiding over a racist genocidal mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Black Dominicans of Haitian ancestry - has done Jamaica and Jamaicans a grave disservice
"Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his administration are guilty of an act of infamy, and have seriously undermined the historic and sacred mission of the Jamaican and Caribbean people to be champions of Black dignity and human rights".
With this government's ears selectively deafened, that prophetic warning went unheeded, leading to the mindless, revolting Cuba non-vote!
When President Obama visited in April 2015, he jovially enquired of his youthful audience at the University of the West Indies: "Wat a gwaan, Jamaica"?
Were that question posed today, the answer would surely be: For Jamaica's image in international relations, our government, with indifference, has chosen a political and transactional path instead of the tried and proven principled approach adopted by all who went before.
A rough, disastrous decade-long downhill journey! How, indeed, are the mighty fallen!
AJ NICHOLSON
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