Martin HenryEVEN WITH a 'prophet' as chairman, the Cabinet could hardly have foreseen that on the day it devoted its entire meeting to the Crime Report such damning allegations would have been made on radio about the links between crime and politics in a constituency that has served both parties well. The programme hosts and invited guest, MP Karl Samuda, currently with the JLP, were equally taken by surprise.
On Monday, the Executive of the Government of Jamaica devoted its weekly meeting largely to considering the recommendations of the Report of the most recently constituted National Committee on Crime and Violence.
PROTECTION MONEY
The meeting came against the backdrop of 1,138 murders last year, over 30 murders in the first dozen days of this year, the launch of the general election campaign at the caucus of PNP Parliamentarians last week-end, the call by the PSOJ Team 2002 to "Let's change Jamaica for the better in 2002", and the extension of extortion for protection money to the inner sanctum of the Church. It was this last matter that brought MP Karl Samuda on to the opening programme of Nationwide on its new station, Power 106, on Monday evening.
On the 95th anniversary of the great earthquake of 1907, what started out as a discussion of despicable extortion threats against Fr. Howard Thompson of the St. Richard's Roman Catholic Church quickly turned into a rumbling political earthquake, taking everybody by surprise. What did the Cabinet have to consider on Monday? Nothing new. I have before me, courtesy of Jamaicans For Justice and modern communications technology, the 16 recommendations of the bipartisan Crime Committee.
Those recommendations could very well have been pulled out of a number of other crime reports in which, collectively, the same points were even more thoroughly developed, articulated and justified. But even before the report goes into official circulation, the bipartisan coalition against crime has fallen apart. Leader of the JLP, Edward Seaga, will have gone to the nation with his party's anti-crime plan on Tuesday night, pre-empting the Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, who was scheduled to broadcast last night.
BIPARTISAN APPROACH
Accusations are already flying about the exclusion of the Opposition JLP from the Standing Crime Committee on which the Minister himself will not be sitting.
So recommendation number 16 seems to be shot, injured and hospitalised quite early in the renewed struggle between crime and violence and law and order. The recommendation says: "Adopt bipartisan approach to addressing crime and violence." My recommendation is: "Adopt non-partisan approach to crime and violence". A huge part of the problem is the original politicisation of crime and now the politicisation of the search for solutions. A civilised government of a civilised country is charged with the task of maintaining law and order and guaranteeing the security of citizens as a primary, unilateral responsibility. But even while disgraceful bipartisan 'peace treaties' are being ratified, to be broken the following week, the new Minister of National Security has already firmly convinced himself, as has the Prime Minister, that narco- crime is the principal threat to law and order and security.
The old link between politics and crime and violence remains a principal driver of criminality in the country. The report of the National Committee on Political Tribalism categorically stated, with much evidence from experts and public, that this is so, and PNP Region III chairman, Paul Burke was telling the Commission of Enquiry into the most recent round of West Kingston violence pretty much the same thing in his testimony on Tuesday. The principal murder zones remain the eight constituencies identified by that Committee as having, or being, garrison communities: Kingston West, St Andrew South, St Andrew South-West, East Kingston and Port Royal, St Andrew West, St Andrew East Central, St Catherine Central, and St Catherine East Central. Both the police and the people on the ground are insisting that the Mountain View Avenue war and the Park Lane/100 Lane killings are between politically divided neighbouring communities and have political motives.
In this election year, it may be too much to expect Dr Phillips to take us very far in bringing down the murder rate as in Barbados, and in the Bahamas which faces its own serious narco threat. His first task is to de-garrisonise and depoliticise crime and violence. It is very, very hard to see how this can be successfully done without jeopardising PNP interests for an unprecedented fourth term. The first recommendation of this most recent crime report is: "The political leadership of the country must recommit to a set of values and a code of conduct consistent with the vision of a safe, peaceful and prosperous Jamaica".
PATRONAGE AND CRIMINALITY
There are several recommendations for reconstituting wholesome community life and leadership and for providing economic opportunities in these communities where political patronage and criminality are intertwined with economic survival.
The PSOJ is calling upon citizens to "demand that the police put an end to extortion. Warlords ('Dons') who rule by violence have no place in the future of Jamaica. The payment of protection money to criminals in order to conduct business is destroying Jamaica. It reduces employment. It drives the cost of living up.The fragmentation of our cities into warlord-dominated fiefdoms must be reversed."
It was this extortion, now directed against the Church, which sparked the discussion on Nationwide.
Fr. Thompson has been brought under the gun to pay protection money and has had to flee his rectory on the advice of both his superiors and the police. A sympathetic MP Karl Samuda was explaining the detailed police-like investigation that he had conducted to identify the described main culprit without success, when a courageous 'little worm' called in to allege that he too, as a contractor for Calabar apartments, had been brought under the tax under the Red Hills road 'system'.
A second person came on the line to corroborate the allegations of the "lying little worm"[Samuda's words] about how the 'system' works and who is involved at various levels. Graphic details of conversations and activities were provided on air.
A LIBEL SUIT
Since it is to be expected that Karl Samuda will now have to follow the Leader and bring, or at least threaten, a libel suit to protect his integrity and good name against these allegations, I will not repeat them. DPP Kent Pantry was later on the same Nationwide programme explaining his ruling in a controversial police shooting case for which no criminal charges have been laid. His responses were also a masterful lesson in handling evidence and on the role of the office of DPP, which threw critical hosts Cliff Hughes and Hugh Croskill off balance and on the defensive.
The sustained attack upon the police by political leaders, media, lobby groups, and John and Jane Public, will have its own very serious repercussions on the fight against crime. And this is no defence of excesses and criminal action in the Force. Those harassed, over-stretched officers are now called upon to saturate Mountain View Ave and Red Hills Rd, and who knows where next, to stop political killings which caan done.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
