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Give the prime minister high marks on this one
Mark Wignall
Thursday, January 17, 2008
It may have been only a small step in him not immersing himself in the security forces' action in Tivoli Gardens and not making what some would have considered predictable noises in its wake, but Prime Minister Golding's decision to treat the recent police "incursion" in the heart of his constituency as just another attempt to flush out criminals has to earn him high marks in beginning that most difficult process of breaking the back of the garrisons.
As the newspaper columnist who has been the most strident in classifying the JCF's previous "campaigns" in Tivoli Gardens as PNP-directed, with the emphasis on psychologically destabilising the JLP and its then leader, Eddie Seaga, I am now faced with an obvious dilemma.
If it was my view that in all instances of police "raids" on Tivoli during the 18 + plus years of the PNP's run, the efforts were fashioned to taint Seaga as a supporter of criminality and to elicit from him the standard, predictable responses, whom should I now blame for the recent action? Certainly, the new commissioner of police has not indicated that he has any political axe to grind, PNP or JLP. And the last time I heard the prime minister speak I did not get the impression that Bruce Golding was planning to cross the floor.
First, let me lay some facts on the table. Over the years of the PNP's run, it became difficult to determine that borderline where legitimate police action in Tivoli ended and state atrocity began. I have been in Tivoli in 1996, 1997, and in the 2001 war I spent six hours inside the community as gunfire and loud, low-frequency explosions (RPGs?) assailed my ears and my sanity as Tivoli gunmen and the security forces battled it out for the better part of three days.
In 1996, I witnessed soldiers in Tivoli Gardens maltreating boys - kicking away their feet with heavy metal boots, squeezing one man's testicles until he squirmed. In 1997, I saw terrified soldiers and police acting out their fear by terrorising citizens of Denham Town in the same West Kingston constituency. That said, it is my view that those who believe that halos are manufactured in Tivoli Gardens must ask themselves what would have happened in 2001 had the police entered Tivoli Gardens at the height of the gun battle.
My answer? Dozens of policemen, soldiers, old women and children would have been shot to death! And not by halos!
Speculation is rife that somehow the recent incursion had the blessing of the political directorate, and some have even said that Golding masterminded it. I believe that if it had the blessing of the prime minister it would only have been to the extent that a success of some sort (guns taken in) was scored. Second, I have not formed the impression that Commissioner Lewin is the sort to phone the prime minister and say, "PM, may we have your blessing in bussing a few shot pon Tivoli?"
Certainly, meetings must have been held between the security minister and the new commissioner immediately on Lewin taking office. There, Minister Smith, a man who would have been under sustained pressure to do something would have laid out Golding's policy of non-interference with police business just as long as it doesn't cross the line into state terrorism.
Where the prime minister has certainly scored big nationally, he is now forced to weather the storm of intense political pressure from residents of Tivoli Gardens who have been spoiled on a lifetime of protection from a dominating, paternalistic political figure, the former MP, Eddie Seaga, co-author of the "garrisonisation" of our politics. Seaga had always been convinced that every person shot dead by the police in his constituency met their demise by extra-judicial killing. But he has never fully resolved that outlook with the list of 14 "troublemakers" which he presented to then commissioner Trevor MacMillan in early 1995.
It is my view that in the last 35 years a chicken-and-egg situation has developed between police action and criminality. As the logic goes, over that period, increasing percentages of young men who interact with the police have guns and are prepared to use them against the police. So the general police approach is shoot first, question later. On the other hand, young men expect the police to shoot first so they, the young men naturally morph into violent shooters, many of whom are prepared to shoot policemen who they expect will kill them.
It must be stated that the fear level of the security forces is heightened whenever they enter Tivoli Gardens. I have seen it on their faces and they have expressed it to me. For this reason and the fact that too many policemen have decided that any interaction with anyone possessing a gun (in the waist, under a stone nearby, under a mattress, hidden under a garment on a clothes line) necessitates immediate death of all involved, I tend to buy the residents' story more than the fancy, predictable line carried by the police.
Again, it must also be understood that residents of Tivoli Gardens require 150 per cent support for everything, good, bad and collectively fabricated. For this reason many of them are now openly condemning Desmond McKenzie, but the person they really want to lay it on for all it is worth is their MP, the prime minister.
The information I have is that gunmen from the Stone Crusher gang were suspected to be holed up in that section of Tivoli Gardens, at the south-eastern end which was once known as Lizard Town. In the 1970s, housing minister Tony Spaulding "allowed" those high rises to be filled with PNP supporters at the height of the hostilities between PNP and JLP communities. Soldiers had to be posted there permanently. After the JLP win in 1980, the PNP supporters made a hasty retreat from the community.
The raid on the weekend failed to net these men but unfortunately five people lost their lives even as a significant gun find was recorded.
In another side to the speculation, it is being said that the security ministry ordered the raid as a prelude to an all-out assault on the garrisons. Newspaper columnists like Henley Morgan, Kevin O'Brien Chang and myself know that garrison pockets like Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens, Rema, sections of South West St Andrew and many others are the breeding ground, the training environment and the safe houses for the criminal gunmen holding this country to ransom.
The reality is, these men are highly sophisticated and many times a gunman in, say, a Kingston garrison who wants to "dust out" someone in, say, Flankers will not bother to travel there to do the deed. He simply telephones someone in code and a barter arrangement is worked out. You kill someone for me whom I want dead because his father had killed my aunt. I will shoot someone close to "my ends" for you whom you want dead because "the bwoy a informer". An unhealthy trade in blood.
It is said that no omelette was ever made without the breaking of at least one egg. Just as long as it's not my egg, we all say. While the residents of Tivoli Gardens cry foul and must have a legitimate platform to air their complaints and seek justice, the prime minister has, by his actions, signalled that he intends to move his constituency to where it rightfully belongs - the wider population of Jamaica.
He is going to be pilloried for it by JLP diehards, but they must face up to the reality that Jamaica is bigger than Tivoli Gardens. I congratulate Golding for this most difficult decision to remain on the side of the security forces. The prime minister must be supported, that is, if we have made up our minds what we expect from our political leaders.
observemark@gmail.com
Mark Wignall
Thursday, January 17, 2008
It may have been only a small step in him not immersing himself in the security forces' action in Tivoli Gardens and not making what some would have considered predictable noises in its wake, but Prime Minister Golding's decision to treat the recent police "incursion" in the heart of his constituency as just another attempt to flush out criminals has to earn him high marks in beginning that most difficult process of breaking the back of the garrisons.
As the newspaper columnist who has been the most strident in classifying the JCF's previous "campaigns" in Tivoli Gardens as PNP-directed, with the emphasis on psychologically destabilising the JLP and its then leader, Eddie Seaga, I am now faced with an obvious dilemma.
If it was my view that in all instances of police "raids" on Tivoli during the 18 + plus years of the PNP's run, the efforts were fashioned to taint Seaga as a supporter of criminality and to elicit from him the standard, predictable responses, whom should I now blame for the recent action? Certainly, the new commissioner of police has not indicated that he has any political axe to grind, PNP or JLP. And the last time I heard the prime minister speak I did not get the impression that Bruce Golding was planning to cross the floor.
First, let me lay some facts on the table. Over the years of the PNP's run, it became difficult to determine that borderline where legitimate police action in Tivoli ended and state atrocity began. I have been in Tivoli in 1996, 1997, and in the 2001 war I spent six hours inside the community as gunfire and loud, low-frequency explosions (RPGs?) assailed my ears and my sanity as Tivoli gunmen and the security forces battled it out for the better part of three days.
In 1996, I witnessed soldiers in Tivoli Gardens maltreating boys - kicking away their feet with heavy metal boots, squeezing one man's testicles until he squirmed. In 1997, I saw terrified soldiers and police acting out their fear by terrorising citizens of Denham Town in the same West Kingston constituency. That said, it is my view that those who believe that halos are manufactured in Tivoli Gardens must ask themselves what would have happened in 2001 had the police entered Tivoli Gardens at the height of the gun battle.
My answer? Dozens of policemen, soldiers, old women and children would have been shot to death! And not by halos!
Speculation is rife that somehow the recent incursion had the blessing of the political directorate, and some have even said that Golding masterminded it. I believe that if it had the blessing of the prime minister it would only have been to the extent that a success of some sort (guns taken in) was scored. Second, I have not formed the impression that Commissioner Lewin is the sort to phone the prime minister and say, "PM, may we have your blessing in bussing a few shot pon Tivoli?"
Certainly, meetings must have been held between the security minister and the new commissioner immediately on Lewin taking office. There, Minister Smith, a man who would have been under sustained pressure to do something would have laid out Golding's policy of non-interference with police business just as long as it doesn't cross the line into state terrorism.
Where the prime minister has certainly scored big nationally, he is now forced to weather the storm of intense political pressure from residents of Tivoli Gardens who have been spoiled on a lifetime of protection from a dominating, paternalistic political figure, the former MP, Eddie Seaga, co-author of the "garrisonisation" of our politics. Seaga had always been convinced that every person shot dead by the police in his constituency met their demise by extra-judicial killing. But he has never fully resolved that outlook with the list of 14 "troublemakers" which he presented to then commissioner Trevor MacMillan in early 1995.
It is my view that in the last 35 years a chicken-and-egg situation has developed between police action and criminality. As the logic goes, over that period, increasing percentages of young men who interact with the police have guns and are prepared to use them against the police. So the general police approach is shoot first, question later. On the other hand, young men expect the police to shoot first so they, the young men naturally morph into violent shooters, many of whom are prepared to shoot policemen who they expect will kill them.
It must be stated that the fear level of the security forces is heightened whenever they enter Tivoli Gardens. I have seen it on their faces and they have expressed it to me. For this reason and the fact that too many policemen have decided that any interaction with anyone possessing a gun (in the waist, under a stone nearby, under a mattress, hidden under a garment on a clothes line) necessitates immediate death of all involved, I tend to buy the residents' story more than the fancy, predictable line carried by the police.
Again, it must also be understood that residents of Tivoli Gardens require 150 per cent support for everything, good, bad and collectively fabricated. For this reason many of them are now openly condemning Desmond McKenzie, but the person they really want to lay it on for all it is worth is their MP, the prime minister.
The information I have is that gunmen from the Stone Crusher gang were suspected to be holed up in that section of Tivoli Gardens, at the south-eastern end which was once known as Lizard Town. In the 1970s, housing minister Tony Spaulding "allowed" those high rises to be filled with PNP supporters at the height of the hostilities between PNP and JLP communities. Soldiers had to be posted there permanently. After the JLP win in 1980, the PNP supporters made a hasty retreat from the community.
The raid on the weekend failed to net these men but unfortunately five people lost their lives even as a significant gun find was recorded.
In another side to the speculation, it is being said that the security ministry ordered the raid as a prelude to an all-out assault on the garrisons. Newspaper columnists like Henley Morgan, Kevin O'Brien Chang and myself know that garrison pockets like Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens, Rema, sections of South West St Andrew and many others are the breeding ground, the training environment and the safe houses for the criminal gunmen holding this country to ransom.
The reality is, these men are highly sophisticated and many times a gunman in, say, a Kingston garrison who wants to "dust out" someone in, say, Flankers will not bother to travel there to do the deed. He simply telephones someone in code and a barter arrangement is worked out. You kill someone for me whom I want dead because his father had killed my aunt. I will shoot someone close to "my ends" for you whom you want dead because "the bwoy a informer". An unhealthy trade in blood.
It is said that no omelette was ever made without the breaking of at least one egg. Just as long as it's not my egg, we all say. While the residents of Tivoli Gardens cry foul and must have a legitimate platform to air their complaints and seek justice, the prime minister has, by his actions, signalled that he intends to move his constituency to where it rightfully belongs - the wider population of Jamaica.
He is going to be pilloried for it by JLP diehards, but they must face up to the reality that Jamaica is bigger than Tivoli Gardens. I congratulate Golding for this most difficult decision to remain on the side of the security forces. The prime minister must be supported, that is, if we have made up our minds what we expect from our political leaders.
observemark@gmail.com
But our security forces must act within the law!
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