THE WEST INDIES: Island’s Rights

The nation that calls itself the West Indies is only ten months old, but last week the major politicians of its fastest growing island member, Jamaica, threatened to secede. The inevitable dispute: islands’ rights v. federal power.

At specific issue is a simmering deal to build a $15 million plant to refine Venezuelan crude oil in Jamaica. Barbados-born, U.S.-naturalized Oilman Frank Desmond St. Hilaire proposes to finance a 16,500-bbl.-a-day refinery at Kingston, bankrolled by the U.S.’s Colorado Oil & Gas Corp. But Jamaica’s legislature must pass a bill giving him a 15-year monopoly on oil refining in Jamaica—plus enticing tax concessions.

Jamaica is ready and willing to grant the concession, but Federal Prime Minister Sir Grantley Adams loudly objects. Under the constitution, Adams must run the federation on an income of $5,000,000, chipped in by the island members. When the federation is five years old, he will be able to pass income-tax laws that will give the federal government more means and more power. In the meantime, he looks with suspicion on any possible crippling tax concessions granted by the individual territories. Before leaving last month for Canada, he issued a warning. “If island after island,” he said, “were to create monopoly situations that would make impossible the achievement of a customs union and an efficacious federal income tax policy, then the federal government could not remain passive.”

By the time he returned,* hot objections were rolling across the islands. Adams did not budge; concession or not, he said, “the federal government can levy its own income tax after five years and make it retroactive.” Such a statement could easily scare off Refinery Builder St. Hilaire, and Jamaica did not take it quietly. Jamaican Chief Minister Norman Manley said that if the federal government even thinks about voiding Jamaican deals, “Jamaica would be forced to reconsider her position in regard to federation itself.” Last week Manley’s top political opponent, rabble-rousing Sir William Alexander Bustamante, put it even more bluntly, in a statement calling on Jamaica “to secede” if Jamaica is not protected from federal taxation.

The Kingston Daily Gleaner put it bluntest of all, in a cartoon showing Adams standing alone under a palm tree as ships labeled with names of the federation’s members pull out in all directions.

* Bringing what he called a godfather grant” of $10 million, of which roughly three-fifths will be spent on a pair of Canadian-built passenger-cargo ships to be owned by the federation, the rest probably on West Indian port and navigational facilities.