His detractors brand Edward Seaga as being dictatorial and authoritarian. They say he removes from the party post-haste, anybody who is seen to pose the slightest threat to his leadership. They say he does not harbour any dissent to his views and that he is a "one-man band ­ the one don." On the campaign trail, they seek to exploit as a disadvantage to him, the fact that he was not born in Jamaica and link him personally to the slightest act of criminality or violence in west Kingston.

His admirers see him as the principal engineer and a foremost developer of independent Jamaica and say his programmes and visions for Jamaica are written in an extensive range of projects and institutions which span the entire range of national development ­ economic planning and development, social programmes, cultural development, urban and rural planning and development, parliamentary and constitutional reforms and several far-reaching international programmes.

An aide to Mr. Seaga describes him as "a strong leader and a hard task-master because he requires near-perfection every time. He is work-driven, a workaholic, so to speak. As political leader, he has perhaps the greatest breadth of knowledge of all issues and is more in-tune culturally and socially with ordinary Jamaican folk than most of us who grow up in the average Jamaican home."

There is a lighter side to Mr. Seaga who, too often, seems to come across as dour. But it comes out mainly in spurts because he is so work-driven that his times for frolic are few and far between, but in a social setting he is quite a humourist.

Mr. Seaga frequently delivers himself of some devastating one-liners ­ turns-of-phrases which are perfect sound bites, ideal quotes, but sometimes they get him in trouble, boomeranging to haunt him. Because of this, he tends to be "gun shy" on certain issues. These one-liners are memorable whether they refer to "dibby dibby", "bag-o-mouth" or are aimed at higher intellectual levels.

In April 1962, Mr. Seaga was elected MP for Western Kingston and he has held that seat for 40 consecutive years. He is the only person who has been re-elected as Member of Parliament for that constituency for more than one term and is the longest serving MP in Jamaica's history. After winning his seat in 1962, Mr. Seaga was appointed Minister of Development and Welfare. Following the 1967 general election, he was made Minister of Finance and Planning and in 1974, he became Leader of the JLP and of the parliamentary opposition.

Mr. Seaga became Prime Minister following the general election of October 30, 1980, when the JLP won a landslide victory over the People's National Party. The mandate of Mr. Seaga and the JLP was renewed in the general election of 1983, which the PNP boycotted. Several economic and social programmes, which have had significant impact on Jamaica's growth and development, were conceived and initiated by Mr. Seaga. He has established, encouraged, promoted or introduced several institutions which have contributed to the modernisation and development of the financial sector. These include the Jamaica Stock Exchange (1968), Jamaica Unit Trust (1970), Jamaica Mortgage Bank (1973), National Develop-ment Bank (1981), the Agricul-tural Credit Bank (1981), the Ex-Im Bank (1986), and the Students' Loan Bureau.

The Jamaica National Investment Promotion Ltd. (JNIP now JAMPRO) was created by him in 1981 as a one-stop investment organisation to promote local and overseas investment in Jamaica. Under his administration in the 1980s, the Income and Corporate Tax system was comprehensively reformed to make it more modern, equitable and efficient. Also, Mr. Seaga introduced modern computerised technology into the administration and organisation of revenue collection in which each taxpayer would be assigned a Taxpayer Registration Number. He overhauled the indirect tax system by combining several taxes into a single General Consumption Tax (GCT).

In the 1960s, Mr. Seaga transformed the country's then worst slum ­ "Back-o-Wall" ­ into a modern, low-income residential community, re-named Tivoli Gardens.

Mr. Seaga established the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) in 1968. Through the UDC, the waterfronts of King-ston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay were developed into major resort, residential, port and office complexes. Among other accomplishments, the UDC has spearheaded the development of Negril as a resort area. The first stage of perhaps the largest of all urban development projects initiated by him, is the 30,000 acre Hellshire area in St. Catherine, a few miles from the over-populated capital city. Mr. Seaga initiated the purchase of this prized area, together with nearby Caymanas lands, for the creation of a new city, through the UDC.

In 1985, Mr. Seaga established the Metropolitan Parks and Markets (MPM) as a subsidiary of the UDC to be responsible for public cleansing, beautification and the maintenance of the parks and markets in the city of Kingston and other specified urban areas.

Mr. Seaga's most satisfying area of creative endeavour has been the creation of several outstanding social programmes especially for young people. Among them are: the Human Employment and Resource Training programme (HEART), which began in 1983 and provides job-related training for school-leavers and drop-outs on a wide scale throughout Jamaica.

The Food Aid Programme was established by Mr. Seaga in 1983 to assist the poorest groups in the society by supplementing their food supply.

Golden Age Homes, a new concept in modern community care for the aged, was launched by Mr. Seaga in the 1960s and expanded in the 1980s, with the construction of modern, planned homes for the aged.

Mr. Seaga created and set up the Jamaica Festival, in which institutions, groups and individuals compete annually in the literary, performing, plastic and graphic arts, as well as culinary skills, leading up to the independence celebrations, and National Heritage Week.

In the 1960s, while he was Minister of Development and Welfare, Mr. Seaga gave Ska, then the Jamaican popular music, its first exposure to the international scene by promoting overseas tours of Jamaican artistes and laying the foundations for the international emergence of the reggae, the now popular worldwide Jamaican music form.

He conceived and designed the Cultural Training Centre for training in all the Arts (Drama, Music, Painting/Sculpture and Dance), and donated his own extensive collection of Folk Music of Jamaica to the School of Music.

Mr. Seaga played a principal part in the return of the body of Marcus Garvey to Jamaica and in establishing the nation's highest Order, that of National Hero, of which Garvey was the first recipient.

Also, he had been in the forefront of the international campaign to intensify and expand economic sanctions against South Africa as a means of bringing apartheid to an end.

On August 22, 1965, he married Marie "Mitsy" Constantine, "Miss Jamaica" 1965. They have two sons and a daughter, now all adults. The marriage was dissolved in 1995 and the following year, Mr. Seaga married Carla Vendryes. They have an infant daughter.