We need more than sound bites
published: Friday | June 3, 2005

THE EDITOR, Sir:

EVERYONE IS speaking about the need to destroy the garrison constituencies, but in my opinion, these are just sound bites in a fanciful speech. The garrison constituency is nothing but people who are homogenous. This phenomenon can be seen reflected in the U.S.A. and Britain, if we recall that contending candidates only campaigned extensively in marginal or swing states/constituencies. To be precise there are only about 200 marginal/swing seats in Britain and about 15 such states in the U.S.A.

We need to clearly define what constitutes garrisons. Is it voting patterns, embedded criminality, or a combination of both? How it came about, was it by accident or design? The methodology used, political cleansing or constituency gerrymandering? These are questions that need to be asked before you can think of destroying garrisons.

If these statements are axiomatic, then rather than asking politicians to destroy their power base shouldn't we not empower the people in these constituencies to break the political cycle of being genetically connected constantly waiting for political spoils and hand-outs. Incidentally, there has always been a nexus between dons and politicians. The original dons being political strongmen for the politicians. The phenomenon called garrison needs to be sociologically and anthropologically studied so as to determine its real socio-economic and socio-political impact.

I am, etc.,

EARL LAWRENCE

Boscobel P.O.

St. Mary