Vernon Daley

National Security Minister Derrick Smith was on this business of hanging again last week.

He wants to speed up the processing of death warrants so that condemned persons can commence and conclude their appeals within the five-year period recommended by the United Kingdom-based Privy Council.

As I have said in this column before, I have no tears for convicted killers who are sent to the gallows for shedding the blood of others. However, I've never been misguided in thinking that hanging murderers will, in any way, reduce the number of killings in this country. Hopefully, Smith is similarly free of any such illusion.

Deserving of criticism

If the National Security Minister is bent on carrying out hanging because he thinks it's a fitting punishment for murderers, then he'll find no quarrel from this quarter.

If, however, he is proposing it as any part of his solution to the country's runaway murder rate, then he is deserving of the harsh criticism that he's not quite up to this very big job.

I see no reason to originate a new sequence of words to express my view on this matter of the death penalty. Here's what I had to say in my June 9 column:

"Many of our hardened murderers are very young men, often teenagers, imbued with an insane fearlessness that drives them to engage the police and other criminals in open warfare in the streets. They would have seen few of their criminal combatants make it past 30 years old and they live with the reality that their own days are numbered. Yet, death penalty advocates are asking us to believe that these young killers are going to be deterred from a life of crime if we break a few necks occasionally? This is trite nonsense if I've ever heard it!

"We also have more than enough anecdotal evidence that members of the security forces carry out a fair bit of executions. Young men in the killing fields of the Corporate Area and elsewhere know that if they are caught with a gun, their chances of having their day in court are very slim indeed. The immediacy of these executions has not deterred them from entering a life of crime, but still we hope the thought of going to the gallows after lengthy trials and appeals would be enough to set them on the path of righteousness".

Carrying out the death penalty is sure to have strong emotional pull among Jamaicans, but it is unlikely to stem murders here.

Smith and his colleagues must be careful not to plant false hope in the people's minds. Let's see some intelligent plans to fight this crime monster rather than cheap political pandering.

Take a rest

There are some members of the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) who are still holding out hope that the party will return to power in short order via the dual citizenship cases before the courts.

If I were a member of the PNP, I think I would be glad for this little respite instead of troubling myself about getting back into power immediately.

The credibility of the party, as a result of the actions of some members, has been severely battered and time needs to be taken to put that back together again. The party has been too plagued by allegations of mismanagement and corruption to seriously contemplate retaking power right now. It should be looking at ways to rebuild trust with Jamaicans.

All this talk of corruption in the Cuban bulb project and the disappearance of money from the Finance Ministry merely underscore the need for the party to just take a rest.