WEDNESDAY'S acrimonious debate in Parliament, along strict party lines, has made quite clear just how difficult it will be to forge any kind of joint political action to fight the drug trade and corruption. Yet such a course of action is absolutely necessary for a meaningful response to the twin problems of drug-running and the corruption of public officials and institutions which are putting the nation at grave risk.Backbencher Doreen Chen, quite properly we think, indicated her intention to bring to the next sitting of Parliament a motion requesting that Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga, turn over to the DPP evidence for the allegations he has made publicly of police involvement with the drug trade. MP Chen's position was vigorously opposed by Opposition members and vigorously defended by Government members in knee-jerk programmed responses.
Mr. Seaga has on other occasions in the past taken the lofty position of being privy to information not available to either the police or the Government in matters such as group warfare in inner-city Kingston. On the other side, only recently, Minister of National Security, K.D. Knight, called upon politicians to stop their involvement with illegal guns. He too has crucial information of interest to the DPP if his statement has any foundation at all.
This spiteful PNP/JLP cat and mouse game going well beyond the normal demands of competitive democratic politics, is a major contributor to our perpetual state of crisis as a nation. It is time to cry shame on our leaders who seem bent on abandoning the national interest for party political advantage.
In the face of the cocaine/corruption threats, superimposed on chronically high crime and violence in a stunted economy, the call by independent Senator Professor Trevor Munroe for multipartite joint action, involving civil society in response is indeed timely.
In Israel, for example, where politics can be as bitter and acrimonious as in this country (except for the violence here), the nation in the face of external threats to its very survival suspends differences to face together a common enemy. If we can't, we are faced with "a failed Government, a failed state and a failed society" as Senator Munroe has so bluntly put it.
