Martin Henry/ ColumnistJUSTICE JAMES Kerr is dead. I didn't know him personally. Nor do I have any direct acquaintance with his work as lawyer and judge. His legacy with which I am quite familiar and which the whole country should not lose consciousness of is his chairmanship of the National Committee on Political Tribalism in 1996/1997 while Political Ombudsman.
Justice Kerr has made his transition at a significant moment in Jamaica's political history. The man who appointed the "broad-based National Committee to consider and recommend practical steps to reduce political tensions and violence," Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, is set to retire with clean hands before the year is out. Edward Seaga has just retired from 45 years of representing one of eight named garrison constituencies in the Kerr Report and as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party.
His successor as JLP leader, Bruce Golding, last represented in Parliament another named garrison constituency and will move to the one vacated by Mr. Seaga to secure an ultra-safe seat. Mr. Golding, who abandoned tribal politics to form the National Democratic Movement, could very likely be facing as leader of the PNP the representative of another named garrison constituency or constituency with garrison communities. That next general election will be a desperate fight. A new PNP leader will be battling for a fifth term for the party and a first for herself/himself as chief political strategist and maximum leader.
Patterson called an early election after succeeding Michael Manley as president of the PNP to obtain his own "mandate from the people". But then political capital for the party was much higher and the risks much lower. The JLP and its new leader are hungry for political power. Another five years in the political wilderness is simply unthinkable and intolerable.
OVERT POLITICAL VIOLENCE
Meanwhile, Lucius Thomas has inherited the office of Police Commissioner after a record-breaking year of murders. Only 880 persons were killed in the peak year of overt political violence, 1980. Last year, with no election in sight, over 1,400 persons were murdered.
Some, including the man who established the National Com-mittee on Political Tribalism and is now contemplating mobilising the army to help the police, would have us believe that there is no connection between the murders of 1980 and the murders of 2004. Thomas, who honed his crime fighting skills in some of the most desperate inner-city places, may be able to shed some light on the matter.
Two of the Terms of Reference of the committee were: "To consider and recommend practical steps in order to eliminate political violence"; and, "To ascertain on the basis of factual findings, the primary causes of political tribalism and make appropriate and practical recommendations for its extinction."
APPROPRIATE AND PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS
The committee provided an abundance of factual findings and appropriate and practical recommendations. Can the outgoing Prime Minister advise us to what extent these objectives have been met? Seven and a half years after the committee reported, not one named garrison has been dismantled or any specific course of action taken to do so. The governing PNP holds the majority of these.
The committee established the clearest of links, "beyond debate", between political tribalism and general criminality, not just 'political violence' and between garrison forces and party political leadership. Political patronage, particularly for housing, was identified as a principal cause of political tribalism. The survival and strength of patronage stood exposed in an item of news last week where an obviously party-appointed officer of a state agency told the court that he had donated the money he confessed to stealing from the agency to the party for the last election campaign; which the party subsequently denied.
The general elections of '97 and 2002, after the Committee Report, were relatively peaceful. This should not fool anybody into believing that the political tribalisation of the society is not a root cause of crime and violence in and outside the clear garrisons which are the principal crime schools. Or to believe that political tribalism is dead or even sick.
Justice Kerr sleeps, leaving a landmark report behind as part of his rich legacy. Others are leaving the political field of action with too many of the recommendations of that report unfulfilled. Others are coming into leadership of political parties and of the law and order machinery of the state. Will their leadership be more of the same, or can we expect a new order pursued with determination?
Martin Henry is a
communication specialist.
