With Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin having withdrawn his short-lived resignation as police chief - as Prime Minister Golding announced in the House of Representatives yesterday - the country can perhaps now get down to the serious business of fighting crime.

Yet, while we hold that Admiral Lewin remains the best man for the job, and has an important role to play in this fight against crime, it is wrong to assume, as we have argued in these columns, that his position is the most fundamental in addressing the crisis faced by Jamaica.

The principal response must be at the level of policy - and not as defined by the national security minister, Colonel Trevor MacMillan. Rather, it has to be something deeper and more fundamental, embedded in and with the authority of the Office of the Prime Minister. In other words, Mr Golding has to assume the fight against crime as his number-one priority, giving it, as the street slang used to be, his 'full hundred'.

Providing a helping hand

Having set that policy, as becoming its salesman-in-chief, Mr Golding then needs a strong and effective minister to help him give life to his vision. He also needs a strong, action-oriented, but at the same time cerebral commissioner of police who can operate effectively on two tracks; he must be able to deal with the difficult short-term issues of criminality while undertaking the difficult job of reforming the constabulary, which is, by broad acknowledgement, inefficient and corrupt.

Which brings us back to Admiral Lewin's decision to chuck it all in, as was signalled by his resignation on Monday, but allowing himself to be persuaded to do otherwise later on.

We do not sense that Admiral Lewin was grand-standing in an effort to extract greater authority. It seems that after six months in the job, attempting real reform, Admiral Lewin obviously felt that he was not getting the requisite support to achieve his goals of delivering a decent policing force and reducing crime. In that regard, he felt it was better that the Government get someone else.

It appears that the internal sniping from police officers who resented a former army man leap-frogging to the top and were offended by the new boss' direct style, was relatively small beer. So, too, was the undermining efforts of the exes who paraded themselves in seeming protection of legacies. What was more probably of fundamental concern to the police chief was a perception that support for him, and his efforts, was, at best, lukewarm in critical councils. He, perhaps, sensed an orchestration by some to undermine public support by branding him as a failure. Prime Minister Golding's ill-considered statement attempting to draw the distinction between operational issues and policy issues, and seeming to suggest that the immediate failings in crime were the fault of the constabulary/commissioner, would not have helped.

For now, though, Admiral Lewin is back on board - hopefully with the grit to confront the criminals on all fronts - including those within the organisation that he leads.

The larger effort, though, remains Mr Golding's. Fighting crime is long-term business, requiring broad-based interventions. But it will also demand stabilising the crisis, with demands for tough decisions and unconventional programmes that can be sold by a PM who believes and in whom there is real confidence.