guardian.co.uk,
Associated Press in Kingston, Friday 6 January 2012
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| Portia Simpson Miller, installed as Jamaican prime minister for a second time, has said she will restore prosperity and drop the Queen as head of state. Photograph: Reuters |
Portia
Simpson Miller has been sworn in for the second time as Jamaica's prime
minister with a pledge to ease poverty, boost the economy, heal political
divisions and drop the Queen as head of state.
Simpson
Miller, who was prime minister for a year and half until 2007, took the oath of
office before roughly 10,000 guests on the grounds of the governor-general's
official residence.
The
66-year-old politician scored a dramatic victory in last week's national
elections, leading her centre-left People's National party to a 2-1 margin in
parliament over the centre-right Jamaica Labour party. Her opposition faction
won a dominating 42 seats in the 63-seat legislature, leaving the incumbent
party with 21.
Simpson
Miller, Jamaica's first female prime minister, takes over from Andrew Holness,
a 39-year-old Labour MP who led the government for just over two months.
"After
being tested and tempered I stand before you today a stronger and better person
prepared to be of service to my country and people," Simpson Miller said
at the start of a spirited 45-minute speech.
She said
her government intended to abandon the British monarch as Jamaica's official
head of state and instead adopt a republican form of government. Jamaica
declared independence from Britain in 1962 but remains within the Commonwealth
and has the Queen as head of state.
"I
love the Queen; she is a beautiful lady," Simpson Miller said, before
declaring to the audience in Jamaican patois: "But I think time
come."
Simpson
Miller said she could replace the privy council in London with the
Trinidad-based Caribbean court of justice as Jamaica's highest court of appeal.
She said this would "end judicial surveillance from London".
She vowed
her government would "ease the burdens and the pressues of increasing
poverty, joblessness and deteriorating standards of living" while also
pursuing a tight fiscal policy and forging strong partnerships with the private
sector and international partners such as the International Monetary Fund.
"My
administration will work tirelessly that while we try to balance the books we
balance people's lives as well," Simpson Miller said.
Jamaica has
a punishing debt of roughly $18.6bn (£12bn), or 130% of GDP.
In the
short and medium term the prime minister said her administration would use
"state resources" to stimulate jobs through an emergency employment
programme that was the centerpiece of her party's campaign manifesto.
Her
People's National party has said it will try to renegotiate roughly 25% of a
troubled $400m road programme financed by China in order to transfer some of
the money to the employment programme.
The prime
minister urged Jamaicans to create a more civil and respectful society and
earnestly strive to make the best of themselves.
"We
will seek to make this country one of brothers and sisters, not of rivals and
victims," she said.
After her
speech, Simpson Miller elicited laughter from the audience by dragging a
slightly embarrassed-looking Holness, now the leader of the opposition, to the
podium and saying she was his "second mother".
Holness had
been elected unopposed to succeed Bruce Golding as head of the ruling Jamaica
Labour party, becoming prime minister in the process.
Golding,
63, stepped down because of fallout from his handling of the extradition of
Jamaican gang leader Christopher "Dudus" Coke last year.
After
initially fighting Coke's extradition to New York on drug-trafficking charges,
Golding's administration bowed to US pressure in May 2010 and sent police and
the military in to arrest him. Seventy-six people died in the ensuing gun
battles between government forces and Coke's supporters.
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