- Norman GrindleySoldiers and police being deployed in 100 Lane, Red Hills Road, north central St. Andrew, following the midnight massacre there on Wednesday.
Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor
THE GLEANER'S headline on Friday, January 4, screamed in large type: "100 Lane massacre". The sub-headline gave the horrid details: "Two children, three women, two men shot dead." In just one violent episode on only the third day of Election Year 2002.
Is this setting the stage for General Election 2002?
Some time this year - and we hope in the interest of this threatened, fearful nation, that it will be sooner than later - this country is going to have its 14th General Election since universal adult suffrage in 1944.
It will be the ninth since Jamaica was granted political independence by Britain on August 6, 1962, all of 40 years ago this year.
The other elections have been: December 14, 1944; December 20, 1949; January 12, 1955; July 28, 1959; April 10, 1962; February 21, 1967; February 29, 1972; December 15, 1976, October 30, 1980; December 15, 1983; February 9, 1989; March 30, 1993 and December 18, 1997.
The governing People's National Party (PNP) has won seven of these elections - including an unprecedented third five-year term in 1997, and the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has won six, including that which in 1983 was boycotted by the PNP.
In most civilised countries, even in this region, national elections these days are pretty routine affairs. A few fist-fights, scurrilous e-mail, libellous handbills and graffiti, or maybe some rock-throwing.
But not in Jamaica, not anymore, not in recent years. The minute a general election darkens the face of the political sky, malicious, ruthless, criminal excesses tend to break loose. To be more accurate, the likelihood of wanton murder and mayhem increases.
Deadly routine
There is a deadly routine to election campaigns in Jamaica. With the earliest inkling of national elections, invariably the killings start - a sort of bloody oozing prelude to the mystery day, announcement of which is the sole prerogative of the Prime Minister.
And there is the concomitant ritual practised alike by the political incumbents and the aspirants - JLP and PNP.
The politicians, sensing they are on the way to victory or defeat, make such a media-grabbing show of national unity in the face of the killings, that you would think it has been their lifelong priority; the fundamental if not the sole plank of their platforms. Aided and abetted by their supporters, especially in the church and in civic society, they make a great song-and-dance of having peace talks and signing codes of political conduct, well before Election Day.
But guess what? The killings go on in the names of their political parties and under their flags. The unwilling and non-suicidal victims? Defenceless innocent women, babes in the bellies, babes on the breasts, toddlers and infants like your own darling little three-, four-, five-, six- or seven-year-olds or relatives; assorted men and the elderly of all ages and gender. Usually poor, black jobless, uneducated people like those slain Wednesday night in 100 Lane, north central St. Andrew.
(According to some sources, the 100 Lane fodder were the victims of entrenched, uniquely Jamaican tribal politics. Others say it began with a row within a stolen-car ring, and culminated in a deportee who is seeking to establish himself as the area don, organising and leading the murderous charge in reprisal).
Whatever the motive, 100 Lane is simply unacceptable and nothing similar ought to happen in Jamaica again, without the perpetrators being assured of certain detection, prosecution and maximum punishment.
There are other rites of the pre-election ritual - the media-opportunity visits by the various head-shaking officials (some of whom are really looking for the chance to canvass and to press flesh). They make "this-can't-go-on" speeches; "leave-no-stones-unturned" speeches; "we-must-turn-over-a-new-leaf" speeches - the usual condemnatory and condoling and hypocritical mouthings.
The sum total? Pedestrian, perfunctory, predictable, platitudinous utterances. No summoning of the war council, because the law-abiding Jamaican society, and that's most of us, ought to be at war with these terrorists. No summoning of the smartest and the best and the most dogged and the most fearless among the police to try to put a stop -- once and for all -- to this Hannah Town, Denham Town, Jacques Road, Rema, Dunkirk, Jarrett Lane-type bloodbath.
After this, there are the recriminations. Then come routine calls for "peace meetings" between members of the Government and of the Opposition, constituency caretakers, and the activists, who more often than not are really the contacts with the gunmen backing their respective factions and leakers of information about the security forces' plans. The talks usually peter out -- like all other Jamaican "nine-day wonders" -- after a few days.
Political tinge
The politicians of the different hues rarely miss the chance to claim that it is their supporters who have been killed, giving these tragedies the requisite political tinge. The fact that these killings are deemed "political", they are never investigated as relentlessly, as thoroughly and as professionally as they should be.
So the meetings and the investigations take on the aspect of a family scandal not to be pursued any further - but this time out of respect for each party's public image and its prospects for victory.
Election Day passes, the winner takes the spoils, there is a bit more blood-letting, and then it's business as usual.
Election 2002 and the period leading up to it, simply can't be business as usual, especially in the face of the 100 Lane massacre which must never be accepted by the decent people of this country, as the trendsetter. Of course it's not the first time that seven people have been murdered in one incident in one senseless night in Jamaica. In Seaview Gardens, western St. Andrew, seven men were killed - all shot in the head - by the Natty Morgan gang at a wake on February 25, 1990 in the misguided name of reprisal. The victims were: Errol Gibbs, 42, a Gleaner photographer; Leabert Monteith, 42, technician; Christopher Gore, 23; Kensil Hughes, 32; Durie Matthews, 19; Stockley Merrick, 50, cabinetmaker, and Paul Johnson, 29, musician.
The 100 Lane slaughter and arson is a stark example of brazen, organised terrorism and criminality. A most threatening statement by highly organised and well-armed gunmen that they can go anywhere, at anytime and commit any atrocity they want to - with impunity.
Coming after similar outrageous barbarity replicated too frequently in too many inner-city communities in the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew, this has to be the wake-up call for the Government, the PNP, the JLP, the private sector, the Church and civil society, the message being that from henceforth, it cannot be business as usual.
This is the starkest of warnings that there is no point in this country continuing to pretend to be civilised and going through the motions of another general election, if after 40 years of Independence, murderous terrorists who would have surely been brought to book swiftly in 1962, feel empowered to commit these most atrocious of murders, with the prospect of suffering no consequence but notoriety.
It is a warning too that we are more akin to the anarchy, "badmanism", gunman and narco-terroristic rule that characterises Haiti and Somalia than to most of our law-abiding CARICOM and Commonwealth partners and neighbours.
And that the Government of Jamaica doesn't seem to be able to do two hoots about it.
And what is worse about these terrorist gunmen is that they seem to be so emboldened by their political and or international drug connections that they have not the slightest fear of detection, much more prosecution.
Face the realities
With all the philosophical arguments Dr. Peter Phillips, the new no-nonsense, get-the-job-done Minister of National Security, used recently to analyse the current crime problem in Jamaica, of which 100 Lane and Mountain View Avenue are so indicative, this is his unenvied hour of decision to face the realities head-on. It is his judgement call and the test of his persuasive influence in a Government of which he is so important a member.
The first is that it is the job of the Jamaican Government to protect every single citizen of the land, be he a resident of Beverley Hills or a sufferer from Moonlight City.
The Minister, quick study that he is, must recognise the almost seamless connection between criminal gunmen and druglords/warlords in this country and the protection they seem to get so gratuitously from their political allies whose nefarious purposes they so patently serve.
The Minister must know that even with the best of technical equipment, personnel and materiel - for the security forces ought to be at war with these terrorists - without the political will to recognise them for what they are and tackle them as such, the upcoming general election may very well be the last before Kingston becomes another Port-au-Prince or Mogadishu, carved up and run by the warlords and the druglords who have been allowed for too long to flex their muscles with seeming impunity.
