WORLD TERRORISM and international narco-trafficking are 21st century facts of life (and death) which challenge democracies how best to balance state security against the need to preserve civil liberties and the rule of law; a conflict which has taken on an existential life of its own since the September 11 Twin Towers attack.
The anti-terrorism Bill now before the Jamaican Parliament has exposed a host of issues, some legal, some semantic, some philosophic which have raised the hackles of the Opposition. It has pledged to fight for suitable safeguard amendments after Mr. Seaga threw down the gauntlet at the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) annual conference. Senator Bruce Golding has been leading the charge on call-in programmes and other public fora.
From a legal standpoint, Jamaica is a signatory to a number of international conventions and protocols on terrorism with which the proposed local legislation must be compatible. Whatever law we enact in this regard must face a review by the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce in April next year which, in turn, is under heavy pressure from America whose Patriot Act legislation has already swung the balance against civil liberties and the rule of law.
The heart of the dilemma for Jamaica is how to arrive at a better balance, given the semantic difficulty of how to deal with terrorism which none of the international organisations trying to cope with it, including the United Nations, has been able to define. This stubborn ambiguity is giving Mr. Golding legislative indigestion because he sees the proposed law as so wide in its application that it could be used by the Government to suppress political demonstrations and political opposition.
Given the difficulties the Government faces in trying to control crime and violence, and the resultant political fallout this is causing, it could well be accused of using provisions of an anti-terrorism law to deal in a draconian manner with local criminals, gangsters and extortionists none of whose behaviour could be reasonably be called terrorism. This would be a case of good ends being used to justify bad means, always philosophically untenable and universally condemned as unethical.
The anti-terrorism Bill brings into sharp focus the need in a democracy for a strong Opposition which can strenuously debate complex issues, especially so since the domain of human rights in the Jamaican Constitution is shaky at best. We hope that Government, taking into account its own past track record on human rights, will not force the legislation through by using its parliamentary majority. It should, rather, be amenable to wide-ranging public examination of the provisions of the Bill so that the essential balance between security and freedom can be maintained.
