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Retreat of law and leadership
Mark Wignall
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The advantage that violent criminals enjoy over the law-abiding guarantees that even as the face of violence marches proudly on to the centre stage of our lives, the law-abiding will, in the absence of leadership, continue to retreat into increasingly smaller spaces to hide.
Over many years they have continued to place their trust in a society that no longer even pretends that there is an entity charged "to protect and serve" the common good. Having had a front-row seat to the spectacle of social disorder in this country, the violent criminal knows that the policeman has retreated, the licensed firearm holder is holding his end only, and the unarmed, law-abiding citizen is cowering under bed sheets.
In the over 18 years that the PNP ran the government of this country, it must have seen how the JLP was thrown out of power in 1972 and 1989, junctures when the economy was growing. At some stage it recognised that it took more to hold on to power among a nation of people short-changed on education, prone to appeals to the trivial and seeking a free lunch.
Prior to 1989, government corruption in the PNP and JLP administrations was mostly confined to the rough and tumble of keeping the lumpen happy. Sure, there would be an assorted "big man" or two making money out of the trough, but where it mattered most, at the vote-influencing base, both political parties pandered freely.
During the PNP's long run, it saw that the man at the top of the society was no less corrupt than the many sucking salt at the bottom. So the PNP decided to democratise corruption. After Dr Davies had presided over the collapse of the financial sector, Finsac was used to silence those close to the top who could have raised their voices in protest.
Slowly and steadily, the PNP began to pad the pay-bill of this country, paying 100 party faithfuls where only 50 deserved it, while ensuring that the "big men" in charge were well taken care of.
In 1976 when I met my first PNP "rough and tumble" big man, he boasted that he had spent the entire day collecting government cheques. He was in an uptown bar, then newly opened by a resident of Arnett Gardens, a community where even the dog votes PNP.
That man was a feature of the corrupt nastiness then taking place at the McGregor Gully project. In that project a fearless man, Ted Ogilvie, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Construction, had identified the corruption and had frozen all payments until the matter was fully investigated. On his way from lunch one day, gunmen cut him down at his home in Havendale. To make matters worse, the gunmen are alive and well today and in your face, laughing and daring the state to do its best.
We should also remember Derrick Hugh. When he was appointed registrar of the Supreme Court, he dug into files and found murder cases literally in file 13. In certain instances, some accused had been on bail for as long as 13 years. He reintroduced the files into the system and some people became jittery. Criminals entered his house and murdered him.
In the 18-year-old "kleptocracy" of the last administration, instead of the PNP administration rising to face the criminal threat to the state, it stooped to accommodate it, hoping to appease the mighty force of hunger dished out with a gun. In a previous column I stated that the ceremonial moment when the state ceded power to raw criminality was when Zeeks was handed that megaphone to quell the crowd gathered outside Central Police Station: the PNP also had plans for a working model of this arrangement.
By virtue of this, the PNP must take some, if not all responsibility for the death of Douglas Chambers.
The wishy-washy leadership of Bruce Golding, which has been ********************footing with weeding out the termites in a system where the PNP made state agencies and entities hang an open invitation to PNP parasites to come freely and suck the lifeblood out of this nation, cannot escape blame.
I never met Douglas Chambers, but we spoke on the telephone numerous times about five years ago. We never did get around to having that drink. From what I know, Chambers could not have a conversation with anyone without it segueing to JUTC. He gave himself two years to turn it around, but the termites, the parasites and the criminal-minded saw a great weakness in the human strength Chambers displayed.
The irony is, the criminals understood human nature and moreso its tendency in Jamaica in 2008. They knew that Chambers' great strength was admired by those of his colleagues who were vocally supportive of him, but they also knew that Chambers as a lone giant was a rare breed. Men would speak of his great work, his tenacity and his lack of fear, only because they had the very opposite qualities.
The criminals knew that as they struck and laid him out as a martyr, we would mourn but do little else. In fact, we would retreat and shut our mouths and hope that the storm of violent criminality - which refined itself and skilfully intertwined its tentacles into all aspects of government in the 18 years previous to the present government - would blow past us and leave us unscathed.
While Chambers' death is just as tragic as the many unnamed citizens murdered over many years, the shooting tells a bigger story as to how far down the slope of decadence we have fallen. Doug Chambers was a firm believer that he would not be cowed into submission and he did it openly.
Where was the intelligence supplied to the police? Usually when I get threats, whether by telephone or email (got one up to last week over an article on Air Jamaica), I respond in specific ways, but I respond. If Chambers had backed down, his action would have signalled a triumph for criminality. Now that he was a fighter and a hero to the end, will we still make the criminals our masters? His life deserves better. Much better.
observemark@gmail.com
Mark Wignall
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The advantage that violent criminals enjoy over the law-abiding guarantees that even as the face of violence marches proudly on to the centre stage of our lives, the law-abiding will, in the absence of leadership, continue to retreat into increasingly smaller spaces to hide.
Over many years they have continued to place their trust in a society that no longer even pretends that there is an entity charged "to protect and serve" the common good. Having had a front-row seat to the spectacle of social disorder in this country, the violent criminal knows that the policeman has retreated, the licensed firearm holder is holding his end only, and the unarmed, law-abiding citizen is cowering under bed sheets.
In the over 18 years that the PNP ran the government of this country, it must have seen how the JLP was thrown out of power in 1972 and 1989, junctures when the economy was growing. At some stage it recognised that it took more to hold on to power among a nation of people short-changed on education, prone to appeals to the trivial and seeking a free lunch.
Prior to 1989, government corruption in the PNP and JLP administrations was mostly confined to the rough and tumble of keeping the lumpen happy. Sure, there would be an assorted "big man" or two making money out of the trough, but where it mattered most, at the vote-influencing base, both political parties pandered freely.
During the PNP's long run, it saw that the man at the top of the society was no less corrupt than the many sucking salt at the bottom. So the PNP decided to democratise corruption. After Dr Davies had presided over the collapse of the financial sector, Finsac was used to silence those close to the top who could have raised their voices in protest.
Slowly and steadily, the PNP began to pad the pay-bill of this country, paying 100 party faithfuls where only 50 deserved it, while ensuring that the "big men" in charge were well taken care of.
In 1976 when I met my first PNP "rough and tumble" big man, he boasted that he had spent the entire day collecting government cheques. He was in an uptown bar, then newly opened by a resident of Arnett Gardens, a community where even the dog votes PNP.
That man was a feature of the corrupt nastiness then taking place at the McGregor Gully project. In that project a fearless man, Ted Ogilvie, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Construction, had identified the corruption and had frozen all payments until the matter was fully investigated. On his way from lunch one day, gunmen cut him down at his home in Havendale. To make matters worse, the gunmen are alive and well today and in your face, laughing and daring the state to do its best.
We should also remember Derrick Hugh. When he was appointed registrar of the Supreme Court, he dug into files and found murder cases literally in file 13. In certain instances, some accused had been on bail for as long as 13 years. He reintroduced the files into the system and some people became jittery. Criminals entered his house and murdered him.
In the 18-year-old "kleptocracy" of the last administration, instead of the PNP administration rising to face the criminal threat to the state, it stooped to accommodate it, hoping to appease the mighty force of hunger dished out with a gun. In a previous column I stated that the ceremonial moment when the state ceded power to raw criminality was when Zeeks was handed that megaphone to quell the crowd gathered outside Central Police Station: the PNP also had plans for a working model of this arrangement.
By virtue of this, the PNP must take some, if not all responsibility for the death of Douglas Chambers.
The wishy-washy leadership of Bruce Golding, which has been ********************footing with weeding out the termites in a system where the PNP made state agencies and entities hang an open invitation to PNP parasites to come freely and suck the lifeblood out of this nation, cannot escape blame.
I never met Douglas Chambers, but we spoke on the telephone numerous times about five years ago. We never did get around to having that drink. From what I know, Chambers could not have a conversation with anyone without it segueing to JUTC. He gave himself two years to turn it around, but the termites, the parasites and the criminal-minded saw a great weakness in the human strength Chambers displayed.
The irony is, the criminals understood human nature and moreso its tendency in Jamaica in 2008. They knew that Chambers' great strength was admired by those of his colleagues who were vocally supportive of him, but they also knew that Chambers as a lone giant was a rare breed. Men would speak of his great work, his tenacity and his lack of fear, only because they had the very opposite qualities.
The criminals knew that as they struck and laid him out as a martyr, we would mourn but do little else. In fact, we would retreat and shut our mouths and hope that the storm of violent criminality - which refined itself and skilfully intertwined its tentacles into all aspects of government in the 18 years previous to the present government - would blow past us and leave us unscathed.
While Chambers' death is just as tragic as the many unnamed citizens murdered over many years, the shooting tells a bigger story as to how far down the slope of decadence we have fallen. Doug Chambers was a firm believer that he would not be cowed into submission and he did it openly.
Where was the intelligence supplied to the police? Usually when I get threats, whether by telephone or email (got one up to last week over an article on Air Jamaica), I respond in specific ways, but I respond. If Chambers had backed down, his action would have signalled a triumph for criminality. Now that he was a fighter and a hero to the end, will we still make the criminals our masters? His life deserves better. Much better.
observemark@gmail.com
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