NOTE:- THE FOLLOWING column repeats many of the words and phrases used by Mr. Daryl Vaz in a recent broadcast. I have deliberately used his words for which I hope he will forgive me because I think that those words were apt and valuable. I repeat them here because I think they should be seen in print.

number of private people have formed themselves into a group called Citizens For Civil Society. It is entirely non-political and in fact its membership consists of people with widely different political allegiances. Its sole purpose is to create a full awareness in the country of the profound danger arising from criminal activities, and to lobby the Government to do something effective about it. It is high time that the law-abiding citizens of Jamaica realised that our enormously high rate of murder and crime will eventually defeat all attempts to create a prosperous country or, indeed, a civilised one.

There is not a great deal, of course, that private citizens can do to suppress the present crime wave. That is the job of the Government, for if any government can be said to have a prime duty, that duty is to maintain law and order. The Prime Minister is not, I know, exactly enthusiastic about legal shackles and the tender-hearted Mr. Carl Rattray would prefer to give our murderers free board and lodging for a very long time rather than to hang them. But if our present anarchy is to be controlled the Government will have to forge some new legal shackles and be less tender about the welfare of murderers.

Indeed, it seems that our community as a whole has been altogether too gentle and "understanding" concerning the subject of crime, and finding excuses for it. There is, no doubt, a thousand and one reasons why people commit theft and murder. Many of our sociologists have established their academic reputations by writing fine and lengthy analyses of the causes of crime and about the extremely long-term methods which should be undertaken to eliminate those causes. I have no doubt that many zoologists feel the urge to write studies as to why man-eating tigers eat people. But any sensible person who is confronted by a tiger in the jungle knows that it is better to shoot it rather than to delay that process by reading a treatise.

Similarly, in that section of the jungle in which we now rather precariously live there is now no time to read learned works and as sensible people we must stem by all means possible the wave of anarchy and barbarity which is currently engulfing us. It is encouraging to see that this newspaper is at last publishing the full facts and I hope that excellent example will be followed by all the other media. This is not a matter of spreading alarm and despondency. It is the absolute necessity that the truth of our predicament should be known. This is no time for the police to suffer from sporadic bouts of sickness, nor is it the time for debate about the appropriate function of the army. Above all it is time for the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to realise that their just concerns about such matters as new constitutions or the Caribbean Court of Appeal or indeed the health of CARICOM will be of no avail if the dons and the gunmen replace them as the real sources of power in the country.

While I feel that it is essential to marshal public opinion there are aspects of this which puzzles me. One reads, for instance, that in some areas poor people have been driven from their homes by the activities of gunmen and some have had to take refuge in police stations. When these people suffer in this way they are the first to demand police protection. Yet when the police go into some areas and someone gets shot as the result of a gun battle between the police and the criminals those same people to whose aid the police came will block roads and complain loudly of police brutality. Another example is that when the dangerous criminal Vivian Blake was recently extradited to the USA a number of misguided people made a loud protest about it.

It is important for members of the public to decide on whose side they are. I gather that the Citizens For Civil Society has urged people to pray. Over the last few years we've been doing a lot of praying about our problems with no noticeable response. But we might strike it lucky this time.

Citizens For Civil Society had arranged to meet the Prime Minister at the airport. Nobody was going to behave in any hostile manner. The meeting with him was simply to ask him to restore the country to a bit of law and order.

However, he changed his flight to avoid the meeting. People are calling him Percival the Dodger.

(Taken from the Sunday Gleaner)