Polack Post: Caribbean Kings And Fools
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
The USA has a president who has teased about an unconstitutional third term as well as being a king. This is an understandable and frivolous assertion that would just be a throw away line but for some of the politicians in large and small countries who have taken the king comedy to heart and brain, even secretly.
Jamaica shares the national motto of the United States of America but not their constitutional belief in limiting an elected president to two terms in office. Jamaica has just elected the ruling party for the third term and with it, a prime minister in his third term.
Some constitutional and electoral scholars may think the country is on dangerous ground.
In 2010, then Jamaican JLP Prime Minister Golding sought to limit the term of the prime minister to two terms based on a 2007 election promise. It was opposed by the opposition PNP party.
Unlimited terms appear to be the rule, requiring party support, for most of the world except Africa with it’s deep history of coups and strongman rule.
Limited or unlimited terms of political leaders are as much the decision of the people as the elected politicians of that party who chooses their leader. In some cases,such as Jamaica, with a razor thin four seat majority, the prime minister has to keep one hand on the wheel, while frequently looking over his shoulder.
That could lead to an accident.
Arguably, the next most powerful leader in Jamaica is the wife of the Prime Minister who was appointed and reappointed again as speaker of the House of Parliament, her predecessor having resigned, before being convicted in a corruption scandal. There is precedent in Guyana when the elected leader’s wife replaced the elected leader upon death, before winning an election in her own right.
Perhaps, for the Caribbean the worry is not term limits but leaders who go off the rails with imaginary, giant friends that inculcate imperial pipe dreams of the Caribbean becoming a 51st state. The old story. First the military then the naming of preferred leaders. Trump only has eyes for the USA.
The entire Caribbean is no match for the American military, unless each and every CARICOM member would become Maroons.
Even Chief Richard Currie, the youngest leader of the Jamaican maroons knows this when he recently refused hurricane assistance with the local military from the Prime Minister on his first official visit to the Maroons. The unconquered maroons, including those tricked into going to Nova Scotia, then Sierra Leone, are unlikely to be tricked again.
David made a fool out of Goliath.
Chief Currie probably listens daily to Nature Boy by Nat King Cole.
Notes
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-trump-has-said-about-pursuing-a-third-term
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/world/asia/trump-south-korea-crown-gyeongju.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_term_limits
https://www.guardian.co.tt/article-6.2.461750.1fd84430db
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20250215/dalrymple-philibert-pay-900000
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trinidad-the-new-costa-rica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_Maroons
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
