Chester Francis-Jackson, Contributor 
Montego Bay Chamber President, Mark Kerr-Jarrett, and his wife Paula wave their hands as singer Paul Blake sings about peace at a Chamber-led gathering in Sam Sharpe Square last Wednesday. - PHOTO BY CLAUDINE HOUSEN
AND SO, with an increasing sense of
lawlessness stalking the land, accusations of a seemingly failed or failing state, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), decided on taking a public stance against the unchecked lawlessness
plaguing the land.
Some say too little too late. Others even say its hypocritical hyperbole. Some even decry it as mere ineffectual posturing, with no real ability to effect the managerial political changes needed to create a new beginning and take us away from this undeclared war.
Mind you all, war is a much over-used word in the vocabulary of our international and national political leaders. War on drugs, war of terror, war on crime and so many other 'wars' the population has been desensitised to the real ravages our criminals have been unleashing on this society, socially, emotionally and economically.
In a nutshell, the criminals and their cronies have been killing our enterprising country for some time now, and the problem is, most if not all of us are guilty of contributing to this seemingly unmanageable
criminal conspiracy, now wreaking havoc on an already beleaguered populace.
CORRUPTION
If the Prime Minister
preaches 'values and attitudes' but cannot find any corruption in the practices of some of his appointed ministers, when the rest of the population sees
otherwise, then it becomes a case of parson saying, "Do as I say, but not as I do," and that does not wash.
If those who drive a high-priced SUV create congestion as they stop in the middle of the road to converse with each other, but lambaste those who drive deportees as being hurry-come-up-no-where-rians when they do the same, then that too will not cut it.
And we want a clean country, but rather than contain our garbage and dispose of it at an appropriate designated place, we toss it from our vehicles when no one is looking, we too are contributing to the nastiness we decry and/or say we abhor.
We cannot continue to offer bribes to authority figures, such as the police and those who form a part of the bureaucratic red tape, while we seek to grease the wheels of bureaucracy in our favour. Ours is a systemic problem, rooted in our cultural practices, and until we confront those practices, we are not any closer to addressing them.
The uptown businessman cannot gripe about the extortion practices of the downtown don, while he is saying to a real estate developer, "I will block your development if you do not give me one of your units."
We fool no one when we do not practise what we preach, and we only compound the problem by pretending that those above the clock have the right to ignore the 'shackles of the law', and those below do not.
It is only by seeking the unity of words and deeds, the promotion of justice and the giving of respect to all of those with whom we interact, that we will
begin to lessen the brutality of those who see their butchery and dastardly deeds as just recompense for the tyranny of those 'keeping them in bondage'.
The duty of policing our state is the duty of all, not just those in uniforms charged with the specific responsibility so to do. In this respect, we are not only our brother's keepers; we are their protectors and defenders. If our brother's savagery appals us, then let us seek to stop it by engaging our brothers before that savagery is seen as the only way he can command our respect out of fear.
Indeed, we have shed copious amount of tears as new feats of savagery gets reported daily. In fact some have even become immune to the reported atrocities, as they seem to really come from another world, and not from the pristine Jamaica in which we live.
In as much as the constant barrage of news of savagery has desensitised some of us, it has empowered those who use this medium as a tool to command respect. And as long as these acts continue to lead our national prime time news broadcasts and are headline grabbers, then the mayhem will continue. And so the way forward must of necessity include a path that restricts these headline grabbing atrocities to the parochial headlines they deserve and not be seen as a national preoccupation. In short, the organised murder of three policemen and a security guard is a national headline. The dispute of a common-law couple who end it with the machete slaying of one is not.
And so, in so far that last Wednesday's call to arms by the PSOJ and it head Bev Lopez at Emancipation Park, mandated its members the political directorate and the us all to move forward, by changing our role in this here script, is not just laudable, it was a call for each of us to be accountable. Sadly, those who it seem suffer more from the status quo, seemed to have missed its importance. And what should have been a show of force became a manifestation of the fear and inertia gripping middle and upper Jamaica, with a sampling of the wider society.
It was however, a changing point in the way we do business, and the august body of upstanding citizens present, augurs well for the cessation in vulgarity now stalking some quarters, and threatening to engulf us all.
The PSOJ has spoken. They have provided an initiative around which we can all coalesce, the baton is now in our hands let us run our leg of the race.
Among those spotted at last Wednesday's call to arms at Emancipation Park, New Kingston, included: Kingston's First Citizen Mayor Desmond McKenzie; Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davis; Foreign Affairs Minister K.D. Knight; Sports Minister Portia Simpson-Miller; Government MP Richard Azan; Opposition MPs Andrew Holness, Dr. St. Aubyn Bartlett and Andrew Gallimore; Senator Trevor Munroe; Head of the Pan Jam Conglomerate Maurice Facey; Chris Bovell of Myers Fletcher; Head of Citibank Peter Moses; Head of Grace Kennedy Douglas Orane; J. Lester Spaulding, head of the RJR Communications Group; JMA Head Doreen Frankson; JCC Head Noel DaCosta; Press Association Head Desmond Richards; Monsignor Richard Albert; Tony Abrahams; Susie Benjamin; David Williams; Carlene Robertson; Geoff Messado; Donovan Perkins; Merrick and Camile Needham; Anthony Chang; Christopher Azan; Audrey Hinchcliffe; Sonita Morin-Abrahams; Capt. David McRae; Donette Chin-Loy; Amber Vicens-Stewart; Judy-Angel Markes; DCP (Ret) Owen Clunie; Dana Cuffe; Sean Azan; Imani Duncan; Dawn Fuller-Phillips; Tenny Miller (in from Mo-Bay); Verity Rushton; Judy Mowatt; Joan-Andrea Hutchinson; Cherry Natural; Stephen James plus several hundred more - all out in the name of peace.
