- File
Francis Forbes, Police Commissioner (left), and Dr. Peter Phillips Minister of National Security, heading for a meeting with Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.
NATIONAL SECURITY Minister Dr. Peter Phillips, aiming to be the country's next Prime Minister, has served notice that he will be continuing the drive to break the link between politicians and the drug culture, along with other illicit activities.
It's a commitment that Dr. Phillips, a likely candidate in the race to become the next president of the governing People's National Party, says will lose him some support among a few delegates and party backers. But one that he says he relishes nonetheless, given the risk to the country.
"It is a clear and present danger that we must confront and if we do not confront it then all the other things that we are talking about in relation to the future of the country will have been rendered of no significance."
Peter Phillips, a vice-president of the PNP, is widely regarded as a favourite to succeed Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. To fulfil such expectations, however, he will have to get by other party stalwarts such as fellow vice-presidents, Portia Simpson Miller and Dr. Karl Blythe; Party Chairman Robert Pickersgill; and Dr. Omar Davies, chairman of the party's Region Three.
To buttress his claims for the top job, the former university lecturer is not averse to highlighting his experience and accomplishments, including his stints as PNP general secretary, campaign organiser, chairman of the party's political education commission, and as a minister who has held several portfolios.
"I think that all of these factors have gone into their (his backers) urging of me and I've given it some serious consideration," he said.
Long regarded as a high performing minister of government, Dr. Phillips has, for the past three years, had to struggle with the seemingly intractable problems of crime control, causing some commentators to wonder if his leadership ambitions will be hurt by the experience.
Professing impatience with such considerations, however, the Security Minister told The Sunday Gleaner that he was busily engaged with the immediate task at hand.
With the country's murder rate soaring, law enforcement officials have identified the international narcotics trade as a major contributor to the problem, compounded by the involvement of corrupt politicians, businessmen and police personnel.
Dr. Phillips nevertheless said that he was "very pleasantly struck and indeed sustained by the extent to which the ordinary delegates inside the PNP and the people in the country, as a whole, want a country that they can be unrelentingly supportive of."
Concerning his fellow politicians, Dr. Phillips said that those involved in wrong doing would find no comfort or succour from him.
"I've always said that the critical ultimate defence of any democratic society is efficient and honest law enforcement. And so the security forces know now, from me, and they know from the Prime Minister, and I can give every assurance that there is no protection given to anyone from any sector, of any rank, of any political coloration. The danger is the survival of our country."
The driving force behind a Phillips candidacy for the presidency of the PNP, he asserted, was to build on the country's potential, while seeking to overcome its many challenges, including, not only the crime problem, but the deficiencies in the education system, and the decline in values.
Ultimately, he said, his decision to run for the presidency "is really rooted in the belief that I can make a contribution to advancing that particular move to create a genuinely humane set of social, political and economic arrangements in Jamaica."
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson is widely expected to retire from public life in 2005, setting the stage for his successor to have a clear two years before the next general election is constitutionally due in 2007.
The Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) will have a new Leader in November, when former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, at the helm of the JLP since 1974, steps down.
Bruce Golding, a former schoolmate of Peter Phillips' at Jamaica College, is widely tipped to win that November contest, raising the tantalising possibility of a head-to-head contest between the two, in 2007, or even earlier.
See excerpts from Earl Moxam's interview with Dr. Phillips in tomorrow's Gleaner
