Holness’ Appalling Address True JLP Elitism…

Anyone with a shred of decen­cy, hon­esty, and fair­ness must be offend­ed at Andrew Holness’s dis­gust­ing behav­ior as a guest of the Police at their retreat in Ocho Rios days ago.
Or bet­ter yet, maybe I should say that in anoth­er coun­try that kind of behav­ior would have been met with a sol­id wall of con­dem­na­tion and sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences to boot.
Unfortunately, Jamaica is not that kind of coun­try, it is a coun­try with a polit­i­cal class which is large­ly a bunch of crim­i­nals, a cheer­lead­ing media which also hates the police, a pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al class with its col­lec­tive head so far up its own pre­ten­tious ass to be of use to the coun­try, and an oth­er­wise vast­ly illit­er­ate masses.

To begin with, when you are an invit­ed guest in anoth­er man’s house you act mag­nan­i­mous­ly to your host. It does not mean that you nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with every­thing that that per­son ever did or say, but it means that for that brief moment that you are an invit­ed guest you show that man some damn respect. If you do not have it in you to have some class, stay away.
But what Andrew Holness did was even more class­less, because while he was dis­re­spect­ing the poor feck­less police rep­re­sen­ta­tives at their own retreat, two police offi­cers had just been shot a mere two days ear­li­er and nar­row­ly escaped death at the hands of the maraud­ing thugs Andrew Holness wants the police to be def­er­en­tial to.

And so even though Holness is with­in his rights to hate the Police, as a prod­uct of his unfor­tu­nate and blight­ed envi­ron­ment, it was high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate that he would con­tin­ue to berate and dis­re­spect the hard-work­ing men and women of the police depart­ment who fool­ish­ly invit­ed him to address them.
Sure some crim­i­nals have seeped into the police force, that is regret­table. Some have also seeped into the Parliament and into Jamaica House as well, and that is vast­ly more con­se­quen­tial.
I did not hear Holness berate Andrew Wheatley who was forced to resign over the Pertojam scan­dal. After all the Petrojam scan­dal has been a scan­dal of epic pro­por­tion which has cost the Jamaican peo­ple untold bil­lions of dol­lars in lost rev­enue.
I did not hear Holness berate Ruel Reid over his scan­dal, lav­ish spend­ing and report­ed­ly alleged cor­rupt prac­tices as Minister of Education.
I did not hear Holness Criticize Carl Samuda who was alleged­ly forced to repay the Jamaican peo­ple for the work­ers who were report­ed­ly work­ing on his farm on tax-pay­ers dime.
Should I go on or have I made my point about the ram­pant cor­rup­tion which has char­ac­ter­ized the Holness Administration?
Because we can go on and detail point by point the inci­dences of cor­rup­tion in this three-year Government.

The Prime Minister, as Minister of Defense, is well with­in his right to be crit­i­cal of police cor­rup­tion, as long as he is equal­ly adamant and vocif­er­ous­ness about cor­rup­tion across the board begin­ning with his own admin­is­tra­tion.
He is well allowed to lash out against Police asso­ci­a­tions with under­world fig­ures, as long as he also looks behind him and in front of his seat in Gordon House at the well-dressed crooks parad­ing as men of char­ac­ter.
What we have in this Prime Minister, is a man who is a prod­uct of and a mind­set which was derived from the past, steeped in igno­rance of what mod­ern day police ought to look like to pro­tect the peo­ple and the stub­born­ness and lack of humil­i­ty to acknowl­edge that he does­n’t know what he is talk­ing about.
In the end, Andrew Holness is a prod­uct of the gar­ri­son pol­i­tics our coun­try must eschew, he is a Socialist, schooled and edu­cat­ed in far left ide­o­log­i­cal think­ing parad­ing as a con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Minister.
He under­stands noth­ing about what the rule of law means fun­da­men­tal­ly to the well­be­ing and devel­op­ment of a peo­ple. His sub­se­quent fix­a­tion with abus­ing and demo­niz­ing the police are bound to cause more harm than it will end the unmit­i­gat­ed blood­shed in our country. 

And now it pains me to see that the Party of Bustamante and Hugh Lawson Shearer, has become the anti-police par­ty. It is no sur­prise that as Edward Seaga the last leader who believed in the rule of law (some­what), has passed, the Labor par­ty my grand­par­ents sup­port­ed, have become the par­ty of Bruce Golding and Andrew Holness, elit­ist frauds who hate the police.
Make no mis­take about it when Andrew Holness stood in front of del­e­gates of the Police Federation and the entire nation and talks about cre­at­ing a police force for good, he is say­ing that the police which exist­ed before was and have always been a force for evil.
That has been his argu­ment all along. His dis­re­spect and hatred of the police come direct­ly from a dark place with­in his inner sanc­tum, as the Member of Parliament of one of the most entrenched gar­risons on the Island.
The many police offi­cers who paid the ulti­mate price in ser­vice to their coun­try do not deserve a weak punk of a politi­cian spit­ting on their grave in dis­re­spect.
What has Andrew Holness sac­ri­ficed for Jamaica?
Absolutely noth­ing!

My squad-mate arrived for Police train­ing with his Bible. He was the most inno­cent, gra­cious and God-fear­ing guy imag­in­able. He always had a smile on his face.
After grad­u­a­tion Seiveright took that same con­ge­nial­i­ty, civil­i­ty, and Christianity to the streets. As a patrol­man sta­tioned at the Motorized Patrol, one night he approached a sus­pi­cious taxi-cab his dri­ver pulled over on the Ferry main road.
Courteous as always, Seiverright approached the cab with the same degree of naïveté’, which Andrew Holness, his min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, and his [non-police] com­mis­sion­er have toward actu­al polic­ing.
Before Seiveright could greet the occu­pants of the cab, he was greet­ed with a bel­ly­ful of 9mm bul­lets, he had no bal­lis­tic vest.
At the time we had no bal­lis­tic vests. 

When I was shot in 88 bal­lis­tic vests was­n’t a con­sid­er­a­tion, we sim­ply did not have any.
Constable Seiveright was not a part of any force for evil, he was not an evil man. I was not a part of any force for evil, every day that I put on my uni­form and strapped on my util­i­ty belt, or but­toned up my shirt and laced up my shoes, as an inves­ti­ga­tor, I stepped out to help peo­ple, and make a safer coun­try for each and every law-abid­ing Jamaican.
The very idea of a tagline which now speaks about “a force for good,” is a dis­grace and a dis­re­spect­ful affront to the tens of thou­sands of offi­cers who gave of them­selves to their coun­try through­out the 151 years of the JCF ‘s his­to­ry. Despite the Yeomans sac­ri­fice the police has giv­en to nation build­ing the Jamaica Labor Party and this Prime Minister has demon­strat­ed that he has zero regards or respect for that ser­vice and sac­ri­fice.
Which brings me to think­ing about those offi­cers putting their lives on the line to pro­tect him.

This behav­ior is not about par­ty pol­i­tics. This is about an elit­ist Prime Minister, from a par­ty which has had prob­lems in the past with per­cep­tions of elit­ism.
But this tran­scends the elit­ism which nor­mal­ly char­ac­ter­izes the JLP and has kept the par­ty out of Jamaica house for almost two decades, because the aver­age man did not believe their goals and aspi­ra­tions were rep­re­sent­ed in the par­ty.
It is about a Politician who is bla­tant­ly igno­rant about a sub­ject and has, in an over­bear­ing way, inject­ed him­self into the mechan­ics of polic­ing and polic­ing poli­cies with­out the com­men­su­rate knowl­edge, or the sense to know that he does­n’t know what he does­n’t know.
In addi­tion to that, he fun­da­men­tal­ly believes that the police are so back­ward and stu­pid that despite their many years of expe­ri­ence and edu­ca­tion a suit­able com­mis­sion­er of police could not have come from the gazetted ranks of the force.
And to rem­e­dy that, he appoints a syco­phant who has zero law-enforce­ment expe­ri­ence to run a 12,000 man police force in one of the most volatile Islands in the Caribbean and one of the more crime-rid­den places on plan­et earth.
Not to men­tion the fact that this mil­i­tary General is the for­mer head of a 3’000 man defense force.
Now inso­far as that is con­cerned, I have no sym­pa­thy for the police brass. Many of them have been pret­ty much lap­dogs for the likes of Holness, crabs in a bar­rel, news car­ry­ing, pathet­ic excus­es for lead­ers, so they deserve the slap in the face. It is the hard-work­ing rank-and-file that I care about.

This requires no cliché, but make no mis­take about it, mess­ing with the Mobile Reserve and turn­ing the JCF into a cour­tesy corps instead of a force, com­pe­tent and able to deal with the chal­lenges and emerg­ing threats of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, will have sus­tained and sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges and con­se­quences for Jamaica.
INDECOM was the brain­child of Bruce Golding, Andrew Holness’ men­tor.
That has not worked so well for Jamaica, but there is far too much pre­tense and denial with­in the Jamaican intel­lec­tu­al space to walk that back. On this issue, the idea of an intel­lec­tu­al space is [oxy­moron­ic].
Sure the police aren’t shoot­ing the crim­i­nals as they are used to doing, so the crim­i­nals are shoot­ing more inno­cent peo­ple than they were used to doing.
But INDECOM, the Albatros, will be around the col­lec­tive necks of Jamaicans, and the killers will con­tin­ue to find solace in the fact that the police have no incen­tive to come after them.
In the mean­time, the gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to blow smoke up the nation’s ass, about the effec­tive­ness of INDECOM with­out ever men­tion­ing the fact that the end does not jus­ti­fy the means. Fewer bad guys are get­ting shot as more good guys are being mur­dered.
This is the twi­light zone that Jamaica has become.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.