"Sista P" wins presidential election in Jamaica

On Jamaica's rutted streets, the complaints have been chronic — home ownership is out of reach for most wage earners, the cost of electricity has skyrocketed, water service regularly fizzles out and decent jobs are scarce. Fed up with chronic hard times, voters in this debt-wracked Caribbean nation on Thursday threw out the ruling party and delivered a landslide triumph to the opposition People's National Party, or PNP, whose campaign energetically tapped voter disillusionment especially among the numerous struggling poor. The win marks a remarkable political comeback for former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was Jamaica's first female leader during her year-and-a-half-long first stint in office that ended in 2007. The 66-year-old known affectionately as "Sista P" reached out to Jamaicans as a champion of the poor with a popular touch. "She cares about the ghetto people," said Trishette Bond, a twenty-something resident of gritty Trench Town who wore an orange shirt and a bright orange wig, the colour of Simpson Miller's slightly center-left party, which led the island for 18 years before narrowly losing 2007 elections. More: Jamaica's opposition wins elections in a landslide - Yahoo! News