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EDITORIAL - Don't let up on gangs
Published: Tuesday | June 1, 2010
There are Cabinet members who represent constituencies with active criminal gangs and political thugs with, to put it politely, influence over far more votes than their own - sometimes to the benefit of ministers.
Ministers, in this circumstance, may find it difficult to unequivocally support a national drive to pressure and dissolve these gangs.
But this is exactly what all members of the administration, including Prime Minister Bruce Golding, must do - go after these criminal enterprises, wherever they exist.
And they must act quickly, grasping the opportunity offered by last week's events in Tivoli Gardens when armed militias fought the security forces to prevent the capture and extradition to the United States of Christopher Coke, a fugitive wanted on drug and gun charges. That threat to the Jamaican state has concentrated minds, generating support for a rigorous anti-gang operation, which in the past would have been constrained by partisan political considerations.
Prime Minister Golding, if he is, indeed, serious about making the recent events a new start for Jamaica, will by now have come to clear conclusions about his political career, freeing him to make the necessary, and tough, decisions.
More years ahead for Golding?
Assuming he intends to continue in representational politics, he would have realised that he can no longer represent west Kingston, of which Tivoli Gardens is the heart. In any event, Mr Golding, given his handling of the Coke affair, must know that his political life is unlikely to have many more years.
His priority, therefore, must be to try and re-establish the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) as a party of integrity, seen to be serving the country's interests and not its own. Nothing will do this more effectively than if Mr Golding uses his remaining political capital to take on the criminal elements and eliminate the stranglehold that gangs have on national life.
If he accepts this mission, the prime minister
must leave his Cabinet in no doubt of the new direction. If required, he must be ready to drag recalcitrant colleagues along.
Preferably, though, people like Karl Samuda, Olivia 'Babsy' Grange, Mike Henry, Horace Chang and Speaker Delroy Chuck, who represent constituencies with gangs which must be confronted, will not require persuading. And hopefully, they will refrain from an unseemly jostle to determine Mr Golding's successor, thereby making the anti-gang initiative more difficult.
Unrepentant garrison communities
In this regard, Mr Samuda, for instance, will want to think carefully as to whether his ambition to lead the JLP stands on a firm base if the public believes that his is an unrepentant garrison constituency. We do not suggest that the gangs in Mr Samuda's constituency determine political outcome. Nor do we suggest that Mr Samuda condones their presence.
We do suggest, however, that the Jamaican public wants politicians who are visibly involved in anti-gang programmes. We invite Mr Samuda to pioneer this course.
While we use Mr Samuda as an example, there are many members of the governing and opposition parties, at the national and local levels - who too often escape scrutiny - to which these comments apply equally.
The bottom line is: it is time to untie the relations between gangs and politicians, much of which have been allowed to develop outside of real public scrutiny. This, really, is the same mission as dismantling garrisons, a vision Mr Golding once so eloquently offered Jamaica.
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