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Don't give in to the red herrings
Saturday, June 12, 2010
According to Wednesday's edition of this newspaper, lawyers representing Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, the former strongman of Tivoli Gardens who is now on the run, plan to challenge Chief Justice Zaila McCalla's dismissal of their application for a judicial review of Government's decision to extradite him to the United States.
We are curious to see how the Full Court of the Supreme Court, which will receive said application, will treat this latest blatant abuse of the court's process by Mr Coke's lawyers.
Will they really indulge what can only be described as an attempt to bluster past the process which is currently active in the Resident Magistrate's court even as their client continues to defy the system at great expense to the Jamaican taxpayer?
We hope not.
For as this space pointed out at the beginning of the week, there is really not much to be gained from entertaining this frivolous application.
The chances of it being granted are non-existent, and given the fact that the Chief Justice has handed down a 22-page opinion explaining why she dismissed it, we can't see what the Full Court could usefully add by way of judicial reasoning.
What really needs to happen as a matter of urgency is for the many people who know exactly where Mr Coke is, to get him to give himself up, if not to the local authorities, then straight to the US authorities.
This -- assuming that our society is united in the resolve to rescue Jamaica from the monsters that are crime and corruption -- is the only feasible way to go.
For make no mistake about it, the horrors -- shallow graves and all -- that have been unearthed in Tivoli Gardens did not begin and may not necessarily end with Mr Coke. Whatever Mr Coke is guilty, or not guilty of, is the product of a complex network that goes way beyond Tivoli Gardens. His loyalists, affiliates, supporters and sympathisers all have a patriotic duty to give up the gig and engage the mores of due process.
Whatever the outcome of the drug- and gun-running charges against him, we suspect that he holds the key to information that could eventually bring healing to our crime-scarred society. And he must be allowed to live to give it.
To believe that it is possible, through various distractions like the application for a Judicial Review, to obfuscate the reality of the real issues at hand is sheer folly.
Things have gone much too far now for us to turn around and pretend that giving up the search for Mr Coke is an option. Over 70 people have died in circumstances from which he cannot divorce himself.
The lives and livelihoods of hundreds more have been disrupted.
The full implication of his reign has yet to be understood for what it really was.
The truth is that it is now or never for Jamaica.
How we resolve this one will certainly set the precedent for how we resolve the other grave challenges ahead of us.
Let's not give in to the red herrings.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...rrings_7698606
Saturday, June 12, 2010
According to Wednesday's edition of this newspaper, lawyers representing Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, the former strongman of Tivoli Gardens who is now on the run, plan to challenge Chief Justice Zaila McCalla's dismissal of their application for a judicial review of Government's decision to extradite him to the United States.
We are curious to see how the Full Court of the Supreme Court, which will receive said application, will treat this latest blatant abuse of the court's process by Mr Coke's lawyers.
Will they really indulge what can only be described as an attempt to bluster past the process which is currently active in the Resident Magistrate's court even as their client continues to defy the system at great expense to the Jamaican taxpayer?
We hope not.
For as this space pointed out at the beginning of the week, there is really not much to be gained from entertaining this frivolous application.
The chances of it being granted are non-existent, and given the fact that the Chief Justice has handed down a 22-page opinion explaining why she dismissed it, we can't see what the Full Court could usefully add by way of judicial reasoning.
What really needs to happen as a matter of urgency is for the many people who know exactly where Mr Coke is, to get him to give himself up, if not to the local authorities, then straight to the US authorities.
This -- assuming that our society is united in the resolve to rescue Jamaica from the monsters that are crime and corruption -- is the only feasible way to go.
For make no mistake about it, the horrors -- shallow graves and all -- that have been unearthed in Tivoli Gardens did not begin and may not necessarily end with Mr Coke. Whatever Mr Coke is guilty, or not guilty of, is the product of a complex network that goes way beyond Tivoli Gardens. His loyalists, affiliates, supporters and sympathisers all have a patriotic duty to give up the gig and engage the mores of due process.
Whatever the outcome of the drug- and gun-running charges against him, we suspect that he holds the key to information that could eventually bring healing to our crime-scarred society. And he must be allowed to live to give it.
To believe that it is possible, through various distractions like the application for a Judicial Review, to obfuscate the reality of the real issues at hand is sheer folly.
Things have gone much too far now for us to turn around and pretend that giving up the search for Mr Coke is an option. Over 70 people have died in circumstances from which he cannot divorce himself.
The lives and livelihoods of hundreds more have been disrupted.
The full implication of his reign has yet to be understood for what it really was.
The truth is that it is now or never for Jamaica.
How we resolve this one will certainly set the precedent for how we resolve the other grave challenges ahead of us.
Let's not give in to the red herrings.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...rrings_7698606