We’ve come up on the rough side
Earth has only one sun. — Tuareg proverb, Mali
“You make progress by implementing ideas,” said Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the united States Congress.
Now that many of the major road infrastructure projects are almost complete, I have already seen ample indications — especially on social media — that there will be another political credit binge by the People’s National Party (PNP).
Recently, Prime Minister Andrew Holness gave the country an update on the major road projects. Among other things, this newspaper noted on March 22, 2019: “Contractually, the Hagley Park, Constant Spring and Ferris Cross to Mackfield Road improvement projects are to be substantially completed by the end June of 2019.”
I am very happy that the major road projects that were started many months ago are almost complete. The entire country has suffered from the considerable inconvenience occasioned by these works. I am particularly looking forward to the improvements in travel time, plus the short-, medium-, and long-term economic efficiencies which better roads will engender.
It’s the fruits that matter
A little over a year ago I wrote, inter alia: “There is a new and more discerning type of voter who is no longer concerned with who planted the tree. That is immaterial to them. They just want to know the tree is there. Their focus is who can maintain the shade and fertilise the tree to continually bear edible and ‘pickable’ fruit. This group of pragmatic voters is expanding fast.” (Jamaica observer, March 18, 2018)
Some with known umbilical links to the PNP have posted on social media that the credit for the major road infrastructure projects belongs to former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. The PNP would do well to understand that successful execution is what matters most.
Few would ignore the fact that some of the preparatory arrangements for some of the projects were started during the previous Administration. That said, can someone tap Dr Peter Phillips on the shoulder and tell him that the new normal in global democratic governance is sensible continuity. Good governments across the world have ceased the foolish practice of throwing out all the plans and programmes of their predecessors. Sensible continuity, in the interest of national development, is the new common sense in prudent governance.
In the bad old days, once a new Administration took the wheels of power, policies and programmes of their predecessors were largely discarded. That era of wanton waste has cost our country dearly. We must never walk that path again.
The PNP can try to hog the credit ‘til the cows come home, I don’t believe that will change the price of their falling political stocks generally, and specifically Dr Phillips’s continued failure to gain significant political traction, especially among the youth.
I believe the political mojo of Norman Manley’s party will only return when it recognises that there is a new political market; new buyers demanding new products.
Dr Phillips said many months ago that he had a grand plan to create what he says is a ‘Jamaica that works for all Jamaicans’. To date the country has not heard the specifics of how Dr Phillips’s scheme will be operationalised.
Folks are no longer impressed by ‘puss inna bag’ politics. They want political actions which result in practical, here and now improvements in their daily lives.
Dr Phillips and the PNP need to understand that folks are asking: “What have you done for me lately?
Opposition parties can also do many things that practically benefit a population.
I believe the Dr Peter Phillipsled PNP has spent the last two years attempting too many acts of political suicide. Its decision last December to withdraw support for the states of public emergency (SOES) is a classic example of political, Kamikazelike manoeuvring.
Good move, Pm holness
Last Tuesday, Prime Minister Holness, on the recommendation of the heads of the security forces, announced the declaration of an SOE in the parishes of St James, Westmoreland and Hanover.
Since Dr Peter Phillips and the PNP withdrew their support for the continuation of the SOES last December, gunmen and criminal gang members who were not killed, incapacitated, or captured have resumed their crime spree. The crime situation out west is particularly dread, as we say on the streets.
Loop Jamaica News reported last Tuesday that: “Two men were shot and killed in two separate incidents in Montego Bay, St James, early Tuesday morning, just hours before Government declared a state of emergency in St James and the neighbouring parishes of Hanover and Westmoreland.”
Some people would like us to believe that this ‘Cowboy Town’ [Wild West] reality can be stopped by mere saturation policing and the implementation of legislation already on the books. These are silver bullets, they suggest.
What rubbish!
One does not need to be a graduate of West Point Military Academy to realise that the rate at which we commit murder in this country, in relation to our population of 2.8 million people, is severely abnormal.
According to Jamaica Constabulary Force data, 49 of our fellow citizens have been killed in St James; 43 in Westmoreland; and Hanover, 13, since the start of the year. Already 410 people have been murdered across Jamaica. They will never return to this mortal coil. As I have said in the past, most of those murdered or incapacitated, doubtless, were the breadwinners for their families. They will live the traumatic consequences for years to come.
I have said in this space before that life is the most important human right. Among us, however, are some who have decided to rape, murder and pillage. And there are those who believe such ravenous beasts should be treated with kid gloves — beasts likes those who snuffed out the lives of 8-year-old Shantae Skyers in Sterling Castle in St Andrew and 11-year-old Trisha Morris of Pond, in Hanover.
Crime runs like a fault line through this country. This has been the reality for ‘donkey years’. I sense, however, that folks are beginning to really understand that no Jamaican is safe in these abnormal conditions.
And recall last week I wrote: “I trust the chirps of the reliable Black-bellied Plovers, Bananaquits and John Chewits. They have been extremely accurate to date. Extremely! At a function last Sunday, a Chicken Hawk took me aside and warbled that the PNP’S leadership is discussing how the party might climb down from its withdrawal of support for the SOES. I grew up in deep rural St Mary. I don’t like the Chicken Hawk. I hope I will be given reasons to have a change of heart.”
Well, it looks as if this new bird might be close to certain important conduits. After the announcement of the declaration of the SOES last Tuesday by Holness, The Gleaner reported, among other things: “In a statement, Phillips said that with the increasing rate of murder in Westmoreland, Hanover and St James, there is no disagreement with a national response.”
Let us see what Dr Phillips and the PNP will do when the SOES have to be extended. Will the PNP do another political suicide dive? Or is it that the Chicken Hawk was right after all?
The SOE cannot be a permanent response to the high levels of serious crime in our country. That is a no-brainer. I believe, however, that, if the security forces were not interrupted in their duties during the previous
SOES we would not be here again. The PNP needs to atone.
TOO MANY MISCREANTS IN THE JCF
Michael Burrell’s interview on Nationwide News last Monday moved me almost to tears. I am sure that others who heard it were similarly jolted.
Burrell, the father of 32-yearold Kevron Burrell, who was killed while on his way to a wake last Sunday, will need a lot of support, likewise his family. This matter must be quickly investigated and justice must be served.
The circumstances in which Kevron Burrell was killed, doubtless, frightened the living daylights out of all well-thinking Jamaicans. If this does not send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will:
“Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson is strongly denying rumours that the three rogue policemen involved in a series of deadly incidents on Sunday were acting on behalf of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). The three are accused of the murder of party promoter Sheldon Daley before engaging in a high-speed shoot-out with another policeman, which resulted in the death of an innocent motorist and one of the rogue cops.
Two of the three accused policemen were already facing separate murder charges.
Commissioner Anderson has also confirmed that neither of them had been suspended, and therefore would’ve had access to police resources, including weapons and vehicles.
The police commissioner says the three policemen were acting as criminals when they allegedly killed Sheldon “Junior Bigs” Daley. He says the JCF has confirmed that they weren’t on any official business at the time of the crime.” (NNN, April 30, 2019) We have heard of police personnel using State resources to commit criminal acts on previous occasions. I hope this most recent will be the final time. But common sense tells me it won’t be. It is time to clean the Aegean stables.
BUCHANAN’S HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY DIATRIBE
Innuendo and blatant spewing of that which is not in accordance with fact about me, as evidenced in Paul Buchanan’s piece last Sunday, will not win him any valuable political brownie points in the Information Age.
He just does not get it! I wonder if his chagrin is partly linked to the reality that the era when the PNP, in particular, enjoyed relative impunity in a then all-too-timid, if not adoring media is past. Time will tell.
I have been writing columns for this newspaper since March 2014.
It is not uncommon across the world for individuals who write articles for newspapers and related publications to be paid by the publication company. I have never received, or been offered, any payment for my articles from any other entity, person, or organisation.
My factual writings have made Buchanan and many others uncomfortable. They know why.
Long ago, it came to my attention that there are persons who want the Jamaica Observer to cease the publication of my columns.
Among other things, they want to see a characteristic sameness in the views which emanate from this and other media. Additionally, they would like to choke off any and every means of my economic sustenance.
“Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will,” said Alexander Hamilton.
This ‘strategy’ was relentlessly applied in the 70s against those who would not toe the political line of the Michael Manley regime. I have written on that sordid business in two previous columns.
For those who are making strenuous efforts to silence me I invoke the words of American lawyer and diplomat Adlai E Stevenson II, and here I take slight liberties: If you stop telling lies I will stop writing the truth about you.
Buchanan suggests that I have ice cubes in my heart for the PNP. Not so! I learned a long time ago that hate does near-irreparable damage to the vessel that carries it.
That Buchanan continues to ignore this fact speaks volumes.
The Gleaner, on April 2, 2013, published an article which said among other things:
“Yet another decision by a school board has been struck down by the Supreme Court because of breaches of the law.
“In the latest case, principal of Tarrant High in Kingston, Garfield Higgins, was successful in having a decision by the board to terminate his provisional appointment overturned by the Supreme Court on March 21.”
I resigned soon after. Mavado [I am sure Buchanan is familiar with that name], in one of his songs says: “Dem cyah style mi.”
Buchanan should have come to this realisation by now.
But, alas, he is evidently too obsessed with credentialism and reputation ordering in the PNP. I remain hopeful, the scales will fall from his eyes.
Jamaica’s best days are ahead. I am betting on Jamaica, full stop!