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Open Letter to the Leader of the Opposition
by Yolande Gyles Levy (Notes) on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 5:02pm
Dear Mr. Holness,
I type this missive to you saddened, disappointed and offended by your position on the Tivoli Enquiry.
It's being reported by RJR news that you're not in support of an enquiry into the Tivoli incursion and instead would prefer some type of "restorative justice and monetary compensation from the state"!
Really Mr. Holness? Really!
Tell me something sir, what's the value of a life? How much money should the state pay the mother in Tivoli Gardens whose son was killed during the incursion? $500,000.00? $1,000,000.00? How much money should the state pay Keith Clarke's family? You remember him? Yes, he too was a victim of the incursion. I'm sure you must remember him, after all his wife was a Senior Education Officer who worked with you at the Ministry of Education when you were Minister. How much money can the state pay Mrs. Clarke? How much money would be enough to wipe the memory of seeing soldiers murder her husband in their bedroom?
You could not possibly have thought through your position on the enquiry, because while you are advocating for monetary compensation, you also mention "restorative justice" for the direct victims of the incursion.
Sir, in case you aren't aware, every Jamaican was a victim of the Tivoli Incursion.
From about May 17, 2010 until when the State of Emergency was lifted and the fugitive Christopher "Dudus" Coke spirited out of the country in June of that year, we all lived under fear and stress, not to mention embarrassment, that yet again Jamaica was making the international news for all the wrong reasons.
I am a direct victim, as much as every Jamaican who had to live here and watch while our country dangerously flirted with the precipice. And the only restorative justice that will begin to heal the wound is an Enquiry.
You see, Sir, Jamaica needs to know why it is that the Jamaican state chose to lay siege on Western Kingston and other parts of the Corporate Area, when the very Jamaican state was getting assistance from the U.S Government that has and had superior technological capabilities? If all that was needed was Mr. Coke, why not use the technology to go get him?
But before we get there, Jamaica needs to know why your predecessor, Bruce Golding and by extension the Cabinet of which you were a member took onto yourselves power that most of you were incapable of by becoming defense attorneys for Mr. Coke?
Jamaica needs to know what inducements forced you all to defend to the very last end a man who has now pleaded guilty to the very things he was accused of?
Jamaica needs to know why the Cabinet you were a member of chose to protect your party over this country?
Jamaica needs to hear why 80 ( the Public Defender's figure) Jamaicans were killed and under what circumstances they died.
Jamaica needs to hear from the State that it will never ever ever again go there.
Jamaica needs an apology.
But sadly, I fear, well now it's more than a fear, it's certain knowledge that this will never happen. Why? Because now, as leader of the opposition, as leader of the JLP - you are not in support of letting the truth see the light of day. Instead, you want to pay some money, say hush and get over it.
Well, I cannot get over it. The residents of West Kingston should not be told to get over it.
In case nobody told you, let me be the first, you are as guilty as Mr. Golding. As guilty as every single member of the security forces that inflicted blows, that killed the innocent and the guilty. Yes, Mr. Holness, your hands too drip with the blood of the 80 dead Jamaicans and the countless others who still bear the scars from the wounds inflicted upon them.
History will not absolve you. As a matter of fact, you've now ensured that you will forever be damned by your action or inaction.
One day Mr. Holness, one day before I die, I'd love to see a Jamaican politician choose the country over the party. You claimed to be "new and different", but now we come to see that those words were just words because as Jesus warned pouring old wine in new bottles will only ruin the bottles.
Yours respectfully,
Yolande Gyles Levy
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