OF ALL the issues raised in the historic action taken by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica at Emancipation Park on Wednesday, the issue of dismantling the garrisons is the most crucial and most difficult. We are, after all, trying to undo decades of political practice which has become deeply rooted in our political culture. Yet it is essential for our future that the attempt be pursued, unrelentingly, impartially and with skill. For we are not likely to break the back of our organised crime problem as long as these states within the state remain intact.The key challenge is how to put flesh on the bones of this 'dismantling' call and to develop a programme of concrete, practical and measurable actions which are socially sensitive, politically impartial and can be publicly monitored. What most people have in mind when they speak of 'dismantling' is a process whereby the militant armed supporters of a single political party cease to be geographically concentrated in a single inner-city public housing project or community. The root of the problem is the hard geographical concentration which creates these protected bastions in which the leadership of organised criminal activities drug-running, extortion, murder and 'jungle justice' find refuge.
The essence of the solution must therefore be dispersal and the development of normal communities in which people of all political allegiances and none at all live peacefully and amicably side by side as Jamaicans.
Some may think such a tall order as to be well-nigh impossible. We should not be influenced by such fatalism. The fact is that all over Jamaica, hundreds of thousands of people of various political
persuasions live in neighbourly peace. There is no reason in principle why this cannot be the norm in every corner of our land.
The first step must be to have this intermingling as a clear civic vision and to insist that the leaders of political parties publicly and firmly commit to this goal. Thereafter, our political leaders, in
collaboration with civil society organisations, must be required to come up with a precise plan to achieve this permanent intermingling and civic unification of their supporters over defined periods of time, starting in this very year 2005.
One good place to start may be the current Inner City Housing Programme in which 98 units are scheduled to be completed in Denham Town and Matthews Lane at the end of next month. The other 486 public housing units in other inner-city areas of Kingston provide a further opportunity for the development of a radically new approach to public housing allocation and management.
Obviously this will be no simple matter and goes beyond the matter of public housing. Our entire tribal political culture is the problem. It will require much personal and civic courage as well as powerful
security support. But with determination, shrewdness, impartiality and public transparency, we will be able to achieve more than we think.
