It is not new in Jamaica to witness media images of residents in large sections of communities bundling their belongings into trucks or on their backs, making their escape in the face of violence and threats from armed criminals. It used to be mostly the effect of the country's divisive politics, a sort of partisan cleansing to make this or that area electorally safe for one or the other of the major parties.

What was new about Gravel Heights in St Catherine was that criminals had ordered the expulsion of people who wanted to uphold the law and a supine Jamaican state, to its infamy, acquiesced. For it was nothing short of a declaration of surrendered authority to have policemen with high-powered rifles on watch, providing 'safe passage' to evicted Gravel Heights residents.

Lack of outrage

What is surprising about all this is the lack of outrage, beyond a few obligatory declarations about the need for law and order from official quarters, over the Gravel Heights episode. It was, it appeared, just another milestone on the continuum of the devolution of the Jamaican state to armed thugs and the hard men of violence.

Should we not be careful, this creeping derogation of authority will lead ultimately to the Balkanisation of Jamaica, with an insipidly effete central government where real power is in the hands of community warlords. Gravel Heights may just be the start of the new, higher threshold of acceptance, just as how we now embrace more than 1,500 murders a year in Jamaica to be the norm.

It is in this context that we note the warnings of Dr Peter Phillips, the former national security minister, contained in an article published by this newspaper on Sunday. Indeed, we believe that Dr Phillips' call for serious debate on the imposition of a state of public emergency, on a limited basis, is valid and sensible.

Serious distrust

As Dr Phillips pointed out there is serious distrust in Jamaica between political parties and the public over the use of a national state of emergency. It is believed - with much validity, we would add - that the last one in the mid-1970s, imposed by the then People's National Party (PNP) administration, was corruptly administered for partisan advantage.

The fear is that such a danger still exists. But Jamaica faces an abnormal situation in that "its democratic institutions are threatened" and action is threatened "by a body of persons of such a nature and on so extensive a scale as to be likely to endanger public safety".

Moreover, there has been substantial change in Jamaica over the past three decades, including the emergence of vocal civil society advocacy that can provide effective monitoring of the use of emergency powers. There are, too, people like Dr Phillips, who is a member of the party accused of misusing the 1970s emergency, proposing its declaration with his opponents in office.

Dr Phillips also makes the point that the use of emergency powers on a short-term basis and with limited geographic application may be more benign to civil liberties than legislation being contemplated. It is a debate worth having.

We must learn from history, not be atrophied by it, unless we believe that we should have dialogue with community dons and devolve power to them.

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