Byron Buckley, News EditorTHEIR RESPECTIVE policy proposals to fight crime reflect differences in the leadership styles of Pearnel Charles and Bruce Golding, who are vying for the office of leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and, ultimately, Prime Minister of Jamaica.
Mr. Charles, a veteran grass roots politician and trade union leader, says he would address crime at the source, in depressed communities where criminals are spawned. He would throw socio-economic programmes at them rather than more guns and bullets.
"The police can't solve crime," Mr. Charles told media managers last week, adding that if he became prime minister he would reduce the complement of the Jamaica Constabulary Force by half.
In contrast Mr. Golding, a technocratic leader, plans to inject resources into the JCF to break the back of crime and return a scared society to relative law and order within two years. He proposes to achieve this by improving the internal management of the Constabulary, boosting the intelligence base through foreign assistance, In addition, he proposes to raise the entry level qualification for the JCF, as well as remunerations in order to attract better quality personnel.
TRIBAL POLITICS
Mr. Golding, who publicly turned his back on tribal politics nearly a decade ago to start the National Democratic Movement, says as prime minister, he would cut the nexus between politics and crime by empowering the police to face down politically-connected gangsters.
"I am committed to dismantling and discouraging garrison politics. I will remove the veil of political insulation (from political dons)," the JLP chairman told a forum hosted by the Media Association of Jamaica last week.
The seamier side of Jamaican politics involves the connection of criminal elements and gangsters to the periphery or centre of political parties where they enjoy economic benefits and privileges such as insulation from law enforcement. This phenomenon proliferates in communities sympathetic to one political party called garrisons. The dons or warlords in these areas have tremendous fire power at their disposal.
While Golding has adopted a reformist posture of no negotiation with dons, his more charismatic rival, Mr. Charles, believes that if engaged and persuaded, political warlords will cease their nefarious activities for the greater good of the society. If this approach does not work, then we are faced with saying to these guys you have to move out and stop preventing peace, he notes.
Mr. Charles, a self-styled inspirational leader, argues forcefully that applying a militaristic approach to fighting crime over several decades has been a failed strategy, aggravated by corruption in the police force, which he is sworn to exorcise.
Charles spent time incarcerated in a military-run prison during the People's National Party Govern-ment of the 1970s, based on faulty police intelligence.
Putting that experience behind him, he now wants to offer inspiring leadership to the oppressed and the society as a whole on a mission to create leaders.
