What are they trying to do? Are they trying to destroy the morale of the only force that stands between us and anarchy?

I do not wish to be misunderstood. The police have no right to bully people or to shoot them out of hand nor should people be pulled in and locked up for weeks without bail while our overcrowded courts struggle, often in vain, to give people a fair trial.

On the other hand, on the very day on which a Gleaner editorial was pointing out the pitched battles between the police and heavily armed gunmen in the Hannah Town area and reported the fatal shooting of Corporal Barrett, who became the seventh member of the Police Forcekilled by gunmen this year, two of The Gleaner's columnists were going on about the terrible things that the police were doing.

What does this country want? On the one hand it cries out for protection from the gunmen and gangsters and on the other hand it complains about police brutality when the police return the gunfire of the gunmen.

No chances

Our gunmen are now heavily armed with all the most sophisticated automatic weapons, and the police, quite rightly, take no chances with them.

I don't think a lot of members of the public realise what brave men so many of our police are or what dangers they face when they go into certain areas. The police, after all, are human like the rest of us and are not, on occasion, beyond over-reacting when they find themselves in a dangerous situation.

I am not trying to say that the police do not make mistakes, but instead of crying out constantly about police brutality it would be a refreshing change if they cried out instead against the brutality of our gunmen.

It is all very well to talk about our being a brutal and unjust society. Until the rule of law is upheld, and until we can control the widespread criminality which besets us, there will be little chance of diminishing the brutality that is eating away any prospect of our becoming a civilised country.

RETURNING TO THE IMF?

Were matters not so serious the biggest joke of the week would have been the news that the Government is seeking a World Bank loan. I call this a joke because the Prime Minister, having huffed and puffed and stuck his chest out in brave defiance of the wicked IMF, his Government is now seeking to get back into the IMF by the back door.

This back door is described as the possibility of a "learning and innovation loan from the World Bank". Such a project loan from the bank will not go through without the approval of the IMF. Nevertheless, I'm delighted by this news, for it means that our Minister of Finance at last understands that this kind of external help is essential.

Another bit of reality which seems to be dawning is that when, recently, the BOJ sold United States dollars as an "intervention" into the market, it sold them at rates as high $38.60, which is about the same rate as cambio trading.

However, I wish them all well and hope that at last our Government is beginning, even in a small way, to recover its sanity.

I see however, that Dr. Omar Davies has criticised proposals made by Norman Girvan as woefully inadequate. In fact, in spite of Mr. Girvan's brilliance, I think that Dr. Davies has a point. Mr. Girvan apparently believes that the owners of Government paper will willingly agree to accept a lower rate of interest in order to help the Government. What a hope!

SEAT-BELTS

Although I've always rather suspected that the great advantages of seat-belts is that they make it easier for the police to recover a corpse after an accident, I cannot deny that the evidence is clear that seat-belts can reduce death and injury.

But this depends upon a number of factors, the most important of which is that everybody in a car will be using them. In practice this means that this will apply to not more than four people in any one car.

In Jamaica taxis can be seen carrying seven or eight people, which means that in practice only two people out of that number, sitting in front will be wearing seat belts.

Moreover, most of our fatal accidents in Jamaica are caused by speeding and irresponsible overtaking. These drivers, carelessly overtaking at high speed, come to a terrible head-on crunch with vehicles speeding in the opposite direction. It seems to me that if we hope to reduce fatalities on the roads we shall have somehow to train people not to drive like lunatics.

While in theory I think the wearing of seat-belts is a good thing, I do not see how it can be generally applied in our present situation. I think the authorities have been wise to postpone the compulsory uses of seat belts until a good deal more thought has been given to the problem.