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Adams
Ian Boyne, Contributor
The largely anti-police media and talk-show hosts have paid very little attention to the published poll last weekend which showed that despite the massive propaganda campaign against Reneto Adams, head of the controversial Crime Management Unit, 60 per cent of the Jamaican people support his continued leadership of the Unit.
The Breakfast Club, to its credit, did have a discussion on Monday morning but the human rights activists interviewed were noticeably subdued. The newspaper report, admirably, put the poll results in context: Despite the aggressive campaign by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and human rights groups for the sidelining of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, six out of every ten Jamaicans want him to remain as head of the controversial police squad, the Crime Management Unit (CMU).
What is even more interesting than the 60 per cent firm support for Adams is the fact that only 26 per cent of the people thought he should be removed. Fourteen per cent said they did not know, meaning the aggressive campaign had not swayed them. In all police shoot-outs in which he has been involved, he has earned criticism of some members of civil society and some in the media, but at the same time, his support across socio-economic groupings in the wider society has been unquestionable, acknowledges the polling team.
Perhaps the most hopeful thing coming out of the poll is that the support for Adams cuts across political lines. While the majority (84 per cent) who support him also support the People's National Party, 34 per cent of JLP supporters support Adams against their leaders trenchant and vitriolic criticisms, and only 54 per cent want him removed. This is very significant and points to the fact that people are so war-weary and fed up with the brazenness of the terrorists in the society that they are willing, despite their tribal loyalties, to put self-preservation before political interests. Some 69 per cent of NDM supporters and 60 per cent of United Peoples Party supporters also support Adams. The poll could not have been better timed, coming after the review of the CMU ordered by Police Commissioner Francis Forbes, who seems to take a lot of his cues from talk shows. The people have now spoken and they are, we are told regularly by Wilmot Perkins, sovereign.
It is interesting to watch the gymnastics performed by those who cry the loudest against the security forces. The same people who deify the people, going as far as saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, and who chastise middle-class hypocrites for not understanding the realities of inner-city life and the condition of the masses will dismiss the weekend poll as merely reflecting the blood-thirsty nature of the people. In other words, the people are not really as enlightened as us sophisticated, rational, dispassionate human rights activists.
They are just responding to primal nature, the law of the jungle; they are still in Hobbes' state of nature. And perhaps its the fundamentalist, Bible-thumping culture which reinforces their eye-for-an-eye penchant. Interestingly, on the same Sunday that the poll was published showing overwhelming support for the beleaguered, maligned Adams, the JLP issued a statement citing another poll by the same team saying that the people had no confidence in the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry, and therefore, the JLP maintained, the Government should heed the people and abandon it. After all, isn't the voice of the people the voice of God? Well, the same sovereign people have spoken on Reneto Adams.
When are the people not the people? It is the same polling team which has found that Reneto Adams, for whose removal the JLP has frequently called, should remain. Will the JLP yield to the people or only when the people echo their voice? We have to be consistent. I don't believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God or that it is the majority who determines what is right or wrong. My ethics has a different foundation. The cultural relativists who reject universal meta-narratives and who instead call for an appreciation of local knowledge and contextual, situation ethics have no basis for condemning the blood-thirsty wishes of people in the inner-city who demand vigilante justice.
Interestingly, it is when the issue of capital punishment or the public support for "tough policing comes up that we hear that leadership and opinion-moulders have a responsibility to lead from in front and provide a vision for the people. You can't eat your cake and have it. The PNP Government is all too easily swayed by every wind of opinion and it is a surprise that it has not already bowed to the pressure from the minority as we now confirm that they are who have been talking loudly about Adams's removal.
Perhaps, the JLP will charge, that Adams has been kept because he is the instrument of the PNP to bring about the Military Solution. On the matter of Adams's alleged corrupt and partisan use of power, I make a public pledge that were I to see the evidence for this or have plausible reasons to doubt his impartiality in fighting crime, I would willingly join the minority in opposing him. We have to take the fight against terrorism seriously and remove it beyond the pale of partisanship. Terrorists and criminals are against all of us PNP, JLP, no P. We are playing around with this country's future. If Adams is, indeed, only targeting the JLP dons and terrorists or the dons and terrorists supportive of that party while leaving those associated with the PNP to live in peace then he should be condemned.
Those who have information against the terrorists who support the PNP must find a way to get that information in the hands of the security forces so that these criminals can be put away. The people across party lines who support Adams and by extension the CMU are saying that they have confidence in him to get all the terrorists, not just those supportive of the JLP. Reneto Adams must not betray the confidence of the people and the multi-party support which he has. He must realise that we are depending on him to get them all regardless of party affiliation. A politicised police force cannot help us in the war against terrorism. Adams does not strike me as being anybody's boy. The man's self-assurance, ego and flamboyance say a lot. He seems to be a man who would take pride in telling even the Minister of National Security to go to hell. I hope I am right.
If Mr. Seaga comes to the country with the evidence that Adams is working in the interest of the PNP and not the nation, then all law-abiding citizens including PNP supporters must support Mr. Seaga. And I am ready to support Mr. Seaga when he speaks out against PNP dons -- and so must all of us who are serious about fighting terrorism. Let's put this thing beyond politics. If we believe in due process and insist on it for criminals and terrorists, then we can at least accord the same to Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and other police officers. But we trip up ourselves all the time. We speak loudly and self-righteously about due process and then in the same breath roundly condemn the police because a few people on the evening news or on the talk shows make allegations against the police and contradict the CCN version.
Well, now that the same people have spoken across socio-economic groupings in the wider society let those, whose ethics is derived from that source, listen. Reneto Adams and his hard-working, courageous CMU team must take heart from this poll. The influence of the talk show hosts, television reporters and newspaper columnists might not be as great as some fear. Or perhaps, better put, the terrorists have so driven fear and terror in such a wide cross-section of the society that we are prepared to resist the constant anti-security force bombardment, for our sheer survival. In war, such as we are engaged in Jamaica, truth is the first casualty. Examine the media daily and you will confirm that.
