Mama Portia Jamaica's first woman prime minister

The woman everyone knows as "Sista P" has reached number one in Jamaica but she's not a reggae singer or a rapper. She's the island's first woman Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, who was sworn in this week.

Especially among the poor, her arrival has spawned an almost-tangible sense of increased national pride on an island racked by economic hardship and more than 4000 homicides in the past five years.

Her unofficial theme tune is I Wonder if God is a Woman by compatriot reggae singer Shaggy. Mrs Simpson Miller, 60, also widely known as "Mama Portia", had been chosen by her People's National Party (PNP), over three male candidates, to replace PJ Patterson, who stepped down as Prime Minister after 14 years. A former minister for sport, she lists her first love - after her husband Errald Miller - as boxing. She knows the biggest fight she faces is Jamaica's drug-related violence: 1670 people were killed last year, more than 100 of them children.

One of her key weapons will be national hero and friend Asafa Powell, the sprinter who won gold in the 100m at the Commonwealth Games. Powell has promised to back her battle, acting as a role model for Jamaican youth "to replace the killing gun with the starter's gun" by taking up sport.

Alongside the island's violence, Mrs Simpson Miller must also tackle Jamaica's growing economic crisis, including massive debts, an almost-stagnant growth rate, 15 per cent unemployment and 13 per cent inflation.

Totally reliant on imports, Jamaica could not survive without its lucrative beach and cruise ship tourism, and its US$1.5bn remittances from abroad.

"Sista P" had survived public insults over her humble origins, from what some call "the brown-skin elite", to win the party's vote after Mr Patterson announced he would not complete his third five-year term.

"To lift up the poor," was her overall priority, she said in her inauguration speech in Kingston.

Most Jamaicans, at home or abroad, would no doubt agree with the words of the island's blind PNP senator Floyd Morris reported in a local newspaper: "Kick it, Portia, Kick it!"

- INDEPENDENT