Martin HenryNOW WE have even more reasons to cower in fear behind our zinc fences and burglar bars. Not that the cowering helps much. The grapevine, our most reliable source on wha' a gwaan, has been delivering messages of bullet-proof vehicles being imported. Wijesekera's cool, professional assassination can only step up the drive among those who won't run and can afford it.
The Director of Public Prosecutions now has lots of tapes to listen to. And that might take him quite sometime much longer than the usual long time to study less interesting paper files. It would be naive of us to believe that he will be "free" to study his new collection of tapes thrust upon him by the Prime Minister and to prosecute his findings. For what the big news of last week running up to now led by The Gleaner on drug-running and wire-tapping is confirming is the deep corruption of institutions and persons.
From far out in the political wilderness, Mr. Bruce Golding expects not only members of the police officer hierarchy but members of the political directorate to be incriminated. But anyone thirsting for the collapse of the Government under the weight of the crisis had better think again. The collapse of this Government is only likely to lead to a bigger and stronger narco-government.
The grapevine, of course, has long been feeding us tidbits which couldn't go to press because of the libel laws. A senior media person advised me that the broad outlines of the story were known weeks before The Gleaner had enough confirmation to break the news on Sunday October 15.
What the nation is confronted with and the DPP has in his hands like a piping hot potato are substantial allegations of a drug/police/politics link. Large questions remain and may never be answered but how the investigations are handled will tell us even more than the actual (bluff?) results.
Drugs corrupt everything and everyone in an infiltrated society. The money, the power and the ruthlessness can buy out or crush out all opposition. We don't yet officially know how deeply the security services, the Government, the media, business, and other sectors may have been compromised by the big money "white lady" passing through from Colombia. But no one after last week can now believe that the infiltration is not proceeding apace or can be reverted without some serious pain.
How much more we can know officially depends on how much freedom remains to pursue investigations and to prosecute top operators. The reportage of last week, including edited testimony from a former operative of the mysterious Civilian Intelligence Unit which apparently could illegally tap the phones of whomsoever it will, has publicly marked a turning point in the nation's affairs. What next?
Brown's Town Community College
The two strangers in the parking lot greeted me by name. A little probing of their smug but friendly anonymity revealed that they were students of the Brown's Town Community College in my time as a lecturer there. We chatted about our time at Comm. C. And I finally got their names. All over the city and country and overseas are graduates of B.T.Comm.C holding their own in many spheres of society. It is a recurring pleasure to meet them and remember when...
Early on Sunday morning, the college experienced its second fire in just a few years. The old wooden main building which has been variously a Servite convent, hotel, school and college was badly burnt. Friends tell me that the two wings and their valuable contents of computers and food lab equipment were saved.
By evening, Comm. C alumni, who are now students at the UWI, had met to organise assistance. That's the spirit. I want to appeal to all my readers, and to Brown's Town Comm. C graduates and former staff in particular, to rally to the needs of the stricken institution.
Quite apart from my own warm memories of a pleasant and very productive six-year tenure as lecturer right after university, the institution is a major place of opportunity for young people of North-Central Jamaica.
One of the strengths of the community college system is to take secondary school graduates kept away from those door-opening CXCs and give them opportunities to prepare for university or the professions. I remember one of our star students coming in from the then Brown's Town Secondary School, doing a string of CXCs in one year, then on to Advanced Levels, then on to university. Multiply that case by hundreds.
The college is also an institution of the community of Brown's Town, the parish of St. Ann and the region of North-Central Jamaica. It is sometimes taken for granted but it is a monument of education and culture and a main source of professional talent for its service area.
The flip side of crisis is opportunity. With our help BTCC is going to be bigger and stronger and even more useful. The institution's first and long-serving principal, now Minister of Education, is well positioned to help her back to her feet. Current principal, James Walsh, who has built his entire career at the college, I am sure will make it easy for contributions to get in. Give us the information, James; you are riding on a lot of goodwill and fond memories.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
