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EDITORIAL: Get after the gangs
Published: Sunday | May 30, 2010 0 Comments and 0 Reactions
Edward Seaga's call for an end to the security initiative in Tivoli Gardens must be ignored, and there must be resistance to all attempts to weaken the resolve of the security forces to go after gangs and other narco-terrorists, whose threat to the Jamaican state was rudely demonstrated last week.
Indeed, the Tivoli Gardens project ought to be merely a start. It must be expanded to other areas, regardless of their political hue, where gangs and violent crime syndicates hold whole communities in fearful hostage - Spanish Town, Mountain View Avenue, Red Hills Road, May Pen, Clarendon, Montego Bay and elsewhere.
But even if they have our imprimatur to dismantle these criminal networks and begin, hopefully, to undermine the nexus between politics and crime, the security forces must operate with discipline, be respectful of the rights of the citizens, and be held accountable. They must be ready, therefore, to explain the high number of persons killed in the Tivoli Gardens incursion and the apparently mangled operation in Kirkland Heights, St Andrew, where a well-known businessman was killed in questionable circumstances.
Mr Seaga's criticisms notwithstanding, mistakes must not be allowed to undermine the legitimacy of the operation in the West Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens to apprehend reputed drug don, Christopher Coke, who is now a fugitive. Of course, Prime Minister Bruce Golding bears great blame for Jamaica's current instability, given his nine-month resistance, on seemingly spurious legal grounds, to United States attempts to extradite Mr Coke to answer narcotics and gun-smuggling charges.
a powerful constituent
Indeed, he cannot escape the assumption that his effort was primarily to protect a powerful constituent and party supporter, whose operational base - built and represented for over 40 years by Mr Seaga - was not only the first and most organised of Jamaica's 'garrison' communities, but the reputed street-command centre of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.
When, under domestic and US pressure, Mr Golding agreed to allow extradition proceedings against Mr Coke to go forward, the response of Coke and his supporters was to barricade Tivoli Gardens and set up assault and defensive positions in the community. The guns and other improvised weapons retrieved by the security forces speak to the intent.
Significantly, at the time of these preparations and demonstrations by Tivoli Gardens residents in favour of Mr Coke, Edward Seaga, ex-prime minister and former MP, who remains influential in the community, remained quiet. He did not urge a different course. But now, like at times of other security operations in the past, he has placed the security forces firmly in his sights and has lambasted Mr Golding for allowing this one to happen. Perhaps we are wrong to expect Mr Seaga, at 80, to ditch habits accumulated over a lifetime.
Given how badly he has squandered the possibilities of his premiership, Mr Golding should grasp the opportunities offered by the state of emergency he declared last week, the early results of Tivoli, and the mood of the country.
We discern the resistance by elements of the old guard of his Cabinet who are wedded to an old order of politics. Mr Golding must steel himself, end his vacillation, and push ahead with this phase of the effort to weaken gangs and their association with politics at the national and local level.
If he stops now, history will be unkind to Bruce Golding.
