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Tivoli Gardens: A spoilt child out of control
Published: Wednesday | June 2, 2010
Gary Spaulding, Gleaner Senior Writer
FOR MANY, many years, Tivoli Gardens was a time bomb waiting for the fuse to be lit.
The trigger was activated last week, almost blasting the Corporate Area into smithereens, a mere five years after Edward Seaga relinquished parliamentary hold on the explosive constituency.
Truth be told, Tivoli Gardens always had the spectre of criminality hanging over it, a community endowed with illegality from the get-go.
The events of the past week triggered memories of questionable activities of Tivoli Gardens residents even as successive administrations - both the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) - did little or nothing to address the root cause of the problem.
When thugs from Tivoli Gardens battered Labourites in the 1991 annual conference of the JLP to prevent Douglas Vaz, Pearnel Charles and other senior members of the so-called Gang of Five from entering the National Arena to participate in the deputy leadership elections, Seaga was the member of parliament.
I was at the National Arena when an obdurate Charles was hit with a Red Stripe beer bottle and was urged by Vaz not to put ordinary Labourites in danger.
I was there when journalists, especially those who could be identified by the tools of their trade, were assaulted by these security strongmen from Tivoli Gardens.
The lamentation of an old JLP female supporter from St Thomas, "Labourites a fight Labourites? A dis we come to?" was heart-rending.
At the public session of the annual conference
the following day, Seaga admonished the media, declaring: "Physician, heal thyself".
Tivoli Gardens was the spoilt child of a doting parent who would inevitably lose control of the enfant terrible, but continued to defend its actions in the face of the indefensible.
Hapless victims
For Seaga, Tivoli Gardens residents are the hapless victims of the people of other communities who are forced to protect themselves from persons who desired to do them harm.
Seaga has never sought to explain the proliferation of illegal weapons in the community.
Are the holders of these weaponry, which are comparable if not superior to those in the possession of the security forces, hapless victims?
Wilton Gardens, better known as Rema, a strong JLP-dominated area in neighbouring South St Andrew, was, in the lead-up to the mid-1990s, a strong ally of Tivoli Gardens.
For some reason, Rema decided to wean itself, but Tivoli Gardens would have none of it.
Rema in fear
An ongoing feud broke out and other senior members in the JLP sought valiantly to broker peace between Rema and Tivoli, but to no avail.
Late one night during the strife, I was taken to Rema and got a golden opportunity to hear residents complained bitterly that Seaga was unwilling to listen to them.
The men of Rema complained that after men from Tivoli Gardens unleashed their terror on residents, the people of Tivoli would run with their story to Seaga.
They said armed men would venture into Rema in garbage trucks and other vehicles that had been hijacked while they were on forays in the South St Andrew community to carry out legitimate activities.
The night I went there, men, women and children were too afraid to sleep.
They played music and games to keep them awake and I saw big men weep as they lamented that the JLP had turned its back on the people of Rema who had supported the party for years.
It would, therefore, be naive to think that Prime Minister Bruce Golding is solely to be blamed for the violence which erupted in Tivoli Gardens last week.
Golding was simply the facilitator.
The extradition issue, which unravelled into the Mannat, Phelps & Phillips scandal, was simply the catalyst.
The community was bound to explode sooner or later.
If it were not Golding, it would have been someone else - it was just a matter of time.
Even Christopher Coke may have been a pawn in the entire set-up. If it were not Dudus, it would have been another don.
This potentially volatile community was created by Seaga and protected by the JLP he led between 1974 and 2005.
But, for most of this period, it was the PNP which was in control of state power.
With the exception of 2001, PNP governments balked at touching Tivoli, making it the untouchable community.
It is both the sin of commission and the sin of omission that have helped to put Tivoli Gardens in the state that it now finds itself.
It is now an appropriate time for the parties to accept their share of the blame so that the truly innocent people of Tivoli Gardens can pick up the pieces of their lives.
