‘An Abominable Betrayal’: Patterson blasts Jamaica’s abstention on Cuba

Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson has slammed the Holness administration's decision to abstain from voting on the United Nations resolution calling for an end to the embargo against Cuba as "an abominable betrayal which history will never forget". The vote marked a shift in policy by Jamaica as historically the island has voted “yes” in favour of ending the United States economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba for over 30 years since the annual UN resolution began. In a scathing rebuke of the decision by Jamaica, Patterson said “It was a day of shame for the land of Marcus Garvey, and a stain on the record of a nation which, before we had even raised our own flag, closed its ports to trade with apartheid South Africa.

” Patterson recalled that in December 1972, he accompanied then Prime Minister Michael Manley to the meeting at which four newly independent Caribbean states resolved to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, “defying the isolation others sought to impose. ” He said, “We took that decision not because it was easy, but because it was right, and because we understood that the sovereignty we had so recently won would mean little if we allowed others to choose our friends, least of all a friend that is our closest neighbour. ” Noting that he is the last surviving participant in that decision, Patterson said: “I write with a sense of agony and seething outrage that Jamaica could so suddenly abandon the fundamental tenets on which it rested: the sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their domestic jurisdiction, and the right of every people to self-determination free from external threat or coercion. ” Patterson was among 11 former Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community who, four days before the UN vote, issued statements…