TODAY is 46 years since the Jamaica Labour Party won the 1967
general election, gaining a second consecutive term. Sir Donald
Sangster succeeded Alexander Bustamante as prime minister.
Bustamante held the office from 1962. From 1962 to 1967,
Sangster was finance minister and acting prime minister for at
least two years before becoming prime minister. He retained the
finance ministry while being prime minister himself. Sir Donald
Sangster, who was knighted on his deathbed in a hospital In
Montreal, Canada, died after serving only 48 days as prime
minister and was succeed by Hugh Shearer. Sangster and Shearer
were members of the negotiating teams for loans and grants in
the first five years of political independence and in the case
of Shearer, for the first 10. After 51 years of political
independence, pay-up time has come. The JLP's slogan in the 1967
election campaign was "The JLP has done more for you since
nineteen hundred and sixty-two". The opposition People's
National Party, led by national hero Norman W