IN NATIONAL affairs, the loss of innocence, no matter how real its possibility, is always a shock when its occurrence receives official confirmation.
Photographs of American soldiers torturing their prisoners in Iraq has shocked the American conscience and called into question the moral leadership of the United States as the world's most powerful democracy. In fact morality, like liberty, is indivisible and a fall from grace is a tragedy wherever it takes place.
In Jamaica, it has long been common knowledge that some politicians have direct or indirect connections with criminals in their constituencies on whose support they depend, but to hear Dr. Peter Phillips, Minister of National Security, confirm this as fact in the nation's Parliament is a shameful blot of the page of the Hansard which will record it.
The Minister's words echo a previous warning by Francis Forbes, the Commissioner of Police, that the intelligence community has established a direct link between drug lords and Caribbean politicians, a link that can undermine democratically elected governments in the area. Any doubt that this applies to Jamaica has been dispelled by Dr. Phillips who has displayed considerable courage and moral leadership in so forcibly denouncing the unholy alliance.
We suspect that the Minister of National Security and the Commissioner of Police are aware that the American authorities know by name the political personalities involved and it might only be a matter of time before this becomes public knowledge, resulting in a huge political scandal.
The Minister, in trying to fend off such an embarrassing exposure, is calling on his parliamentary colleagues to stop sending confusing signals to the public. Such moral ambiguity occurs when politicians of both parties attend the funeral of known criminal dons and when they are seen to condone the blatant corruption which has made Jamaica a society in which the man who plays by the rules gets shafted.
Even as politicians are urged to clean up their act, more stringent steps must be taken to remove corrupt cops from the Police Force. Even the judiciary is in danger of being contaminated and as the criminal contagion spreads society itself is in great danger of collapsing. We earnestly hope that the Minister's words to the wise will be sufficient.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
