JAMAICA is run by two polit­i­cal par­ties, The Jamaica Labor Party(JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). Between the two Parties, Jamaica has devolved into a series of balka­nized criminal/​political enclaves, in some instances impreg­nable to the rule of law.

At present Jamaican tax-pay­ers are present­ly on the hook to the tune of 350 mil­lion dol­lars. Money being spent on the Tivoli Gardens Inquiry which will tell us what we already know.
That Tivoli Gardens , like Arnett Gardens, Wilton Gardens, Nanny-ville, Dunkirk, Riverton, and the pletho­ra of oth­er zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions were made to ger­mi­nate and grow because both Political par­ties want­ed it so.

At least I hope that is what will come out of the fish­ing expe­di­tion present­ly gob­bling up scarce resources which could be bet­ter spent alle­vi­at­ing the coun­try’s dire pover­ty and crime problem.

The nar­ra­tive Jamaica’s bour­geoisie’ used dur­ing the 80’s to ear­ly 90’s when I served in the police depart­ment, was that the police were mere­ly big igno­rant men capa­ble of wield­ing batons. As we got clos­er to the ear­ly 90’s, the nar­ra­tive shift­ed slight­ly because of the lethal way some cops dealt with the coun­try’s vio­lent criminals.

The new nar­ra­tive was that cops were mere­ly “illit­er­ates” whose only claim to fame was their abil­i­ty to pull a trigger.
The truth of the mat­ter is that the true rea­son behind our nation’s bur­geon­ing crime rate has been the refusal of suc­ces­sive Administrations to deal deci­sive­ly with crime on the one hand, and on the oth­er hand both polit­i­cal par­ties engaged in an arms-race of sorts to see which par­ty could bet­ter arm it’s supporters.
In the mid­dle stood the ill-equipped, poor­ly trained, poor­ly paid, polit­i­cal­ly-neutered police force as the scapegoat.

The rise of the “Don cul­ture” is a direct result of both polit­i­cal par­ties direct involve­ment in plac­ing weapons into the hands of the coun­try’s young impres­sion­able youths.
Of course the Police depart­ment has had more lack­eys than any depart­ment should, but the prob­lem Jamaica faces today were cre­at­ed by both polit­i­cal parties.
The long list of mur­der­ous psy­chot­ic crim­i­nals Jamaicans cel­e­brate as “Dons” ‚receive the adu­la­tion the rule of law deserves, unfor­tu­nate­ly the polit­i­cal elites did not want it that way.

Today after the Tivoli inva­sion, an inva­sion nec­es­sary for annex­a­tion, there are report­ing which indi­cate the Spanish Town PNP affil­i­ate Clans-Man-Criminal Gang extract over 1.5 mil­lion Dollars per day in extor­tion fees from Businesses oper­at­ing in the old capital.
One report­ing indi­cat­ed National Security Minister Peter Bunting encour­aged busi­ness oper­a­tors to install sur­veil­lance cam­eras in their establishments.

Bunting promised that a police post would be re-opened at the bus park in July. It went on to add that it is esti­mat­ed that based on the num­ber of bus­es that use the park dai­ly, all of the monies added up is an esti­mat­ed $1.5 mil. Authorities cur­rent­ly have a num­ber of per­sons on a watch list, includ­ing six (6) wealthy, high-pro­file per­sons who are believed to be pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port for the extortionists.

That seem to be the extent of the nation’s secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus abil­i­ty to com­bat what is clear­ly a seri­ous problem.
This prob­lem will only get more dire the more cash-flush this crim­i­nal enter­prise become.
Why is the Police Department not using aggres­sive Intelligence gath­er­ing to elim­i­nate once and for all this can­cer of extortion?
The police depart­ment now has a PhD at it’s helm. The bour­geoisie’ can no longer use “dunce­ness” to dis­par­age the police, at least not the entire high command.
Why then is there no cohe­sive effec­tive intel­li­gence ‑based strat­e­gy in the works, designed to erad­i­cate the Clans-man Gang from our country?

Is there polit­i­cal pres­sure on the police to hands-off that crim­i­nal gang? Or is the police sim­ply too stu­pid and inept to seri­ous­ly tack­le this scourge?
Encouraging busi­ness own­ers to install cam­eras is not a 21^st cen­tu­ry strat­e­gy for this prob­lem , it is an invi­ta­tion for swift and sud­den death.
The Minister by his utter­ances have dis­played a sim­plis­tic, almost child­like lack of under­stand­ing of what needs to be done to arrest this problem.
Either that, or there is no desire to bring the activ­i­ties of the Clans-man Gang to a halt

How about that?
You kill my father then deride me for being fatherless !!!
Such has been the strat­e­gy of Legislatures all across America in their con­tin­ued march to mar­gin­al­ize and side­line African-American people.

African-Americans could have, and can do a bet­ter job of pro­tect­ing them­selves against the sys­tem but that is a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion than the one I want to have today.
Systematically design­ing laws which tar­gets Black Americans, then Militarizing Police depart­ments and plac­ing them in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or with strict codes of aggres­sive polic­ing is only one way in which large­ly white leg­is­la­tures have designed the sys­tem to solve their Black problem.

Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton is now forced to put dis­tance between her­self and the oner­ous crime bill her hus­band Bill Clinton a Democrat signed on the backs of poor blacks.
The United States Supreme Court recent­ly stripped away part of the vot­ing Rights Act.
The Argument the Court used in jus­ti­fy­ing it’s deci­sion was that the law was no longer nec­es­sary because the South is not as Racist as it once was.
In oth­er words the court’s argu­ment is that it struck down parts of the law because it worked too well.
Of course, based on the rhetoric and leg­isla­tive actions across the coun­try , the new stan­dard of Democracy from the polit­i­cal right is to keep from the polls the peo­ple who are like­ly to vote for the opposition.

The Goal of the white pow­er struc­ture was always to keep Blacks out of posi­tions of power.
This means black men in par­tic­u­lar must be giv­en a record as ear­ly as possible.
The idea is to ensure that the most aggres­sive forms of polic­ing are employed, irre­spec­tive of legal­i­ty or constitutionality.
Making sure young black men get a crim­i­nal record is mar­ried to laws which says if you have a crim­i­nal record you can­not become a Lawyer or a Judge. You can­not get a job in any sen­si­tive area of Government. Oh and you can­not become a cop either.
It is imper­a­tive that Blacks are kept off police depart­ments if the plan is to work effectively.
As if that was not enough, blacks com­ing out of the prison indus­tri­al com­plex have had their vot­ing rights stripped away.

If you ask any Legislator what is the rea­son for strip­ping vot­ing rights away from peo­ple with crim­i­nal records ? They tell you sim­ply , that they don’t deserve the right to vote.
That was the answer Presidential wannabes like Mitt Romney and oth­ers gave when asked.
Paying one’s debt to soci­ety is not enough as far as they are con­cerned. Those the sys­tem choos­es to give a crim­i­nal record must also wear a scar­let let­ter for the remain­der of their lives.
That has always been America’s answer to it’s ongo­ing cru­sade to tram­ple and sup­press it’s black population.

So when William Bratton, New York City’s Police Commissioner stat­ed recent­ly that his depart­ment can­not hire blacks because too many have crim­i­nal records,Bratton was essen­tial­ly laugh­ing at the father­less chil­dren he and oth­ers like him cre­at­ed after killing their fathers.
Bratton claimed his com­ments were tak­en out of con­text in an inter­view he gave to British Publication, the Guardian.
In the Interview Bratton said quote: “That’s well known. It’s an unfor­tu­nate fact that in the male black pop­u­la­tion, a very sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of them, more so than whites or oth­er minor­i­ty can­di­dates, because of con­vic­tions, prison records, are nev­er going to be hired by a police depart­ment. That’s a real­i­ty. That’s not a byprod­uct of stop-and-frisk,”

Bratton has stri­dent­ly made the case for New York City’s stop-and-frisk laws , dubbed bro­ken-win­dows, argu­ing they are nec­es­sary to remove guns from the streets.
As a for­mer police offi­cer I see ben­e­fits to police hav­ing that tool to stop and search some­one whom they believe may have an ille­gal weapon.
I also agree that when crim­i­nals know they will not be stopped and searched for ille­gal weapons, they are more like­ly to car­ry weapons and use them.

The prob­lem is not that the laws are par­tic­u­lar­ly bad. The prob­lem rests with those empow­ered to enforce them.
When cops uses those very laws to harass , intim­i­date, abuse and humil­i­ate, the laws become a problem.
Bratton like so many oth­ers, fail to see that the very med­i­cine he has been giv­ing the patient is killing him because he stub­born­ly fails to heed the side effects warn­ings in the disclaimer.
As always, when­ev­er I talk about police vio­lence, I try to point out that the police are mere­ly mir­ror­ing the intent behind the devi­ous laws craft­ed and passed by big­ots with­in state leg­is­la­tures across the country.
These laws are designed and passed in state and munic­i­pal leg­is­la­tures, the fight to erad­i­cate police aggres­sion should begin there.
Not in front of Police Headquarters.….

The Institution of white Supremacy may be char­ac­ter­ized as ema­nat­ing from intel­lec­tu­al infe­ri­or­i­ty. It per­son­i­fies a psy­cho­log­i­cal weak­ness, intel­lec­tu­al infe­ri­or­i­ty and a mor­bid fear of los­ing if it com­petes on an even play­ing field.
It’s prac­ti­tion­ers though Bullies , demon­strate an infan­tile propen­si­ty to pick up the ball and go home because the oth­ers did not let them win.
Such has been the atti­tude of Europeans who came to the Western World and declared they dis­cov­ered it. Though they came and saw thriv­ing cul­tures where black and Native peo­ple coex­ist­ed peacefully.
They nev­er quite got around to explain­ing how they dis­cov­ered a place where peo­ple exist­ed for hun­dreds of years before they fig­ured out the world was­n’t flat.

Unfortunately for peo­ple of col­or the hoax the crim­i­nal Christopher Columbus and his band of European Dregs per­pet­u­at­ed on Humanity was just the begin­ning of one of the most bru­tal, oppres­sive and mur­der­ous peri­od in doc­u­ment­ed human history.
They pil­laged and raped Africa divid­ing up the con­ti­nent among themselves.
They slaugh­tered hun­dreds of mil­lions of Africans, and took hun­dreds of mil­lions more into slavery.
Native Americans did not fare much bet­ter, entire tribes were slaugh­tered by the set­tlers as they pushed far­ther and far­ther tak­ing all the land from the nether regions of North America to the Pacific Coast.

Killing and enslav­ing oth­ers was not enough, they need­ed to dom­i­nate the world , sep­a­rat­ing peo­ple based on skin col­or, based on the false nar­ra­tive that whites are intel­lec­tu­al­ly supe­ri­or to oth­er races.
The truth, is the guys with gun pow­der decid­ed they would con­trol every­one else.
Ironically the peo­ple who sought to place the rest of the World over a bar­rel at the point of a gun were not smart enough to invent gunpowder.
The Chinese invent­ed Gun-Powder in the 9^th cen­tu­ry, more than four cen­turies before the lying Columbus set sail for India and China and lost his way.
Despite invent­ing Gun-pow­der which in my esti­ma­tion was the key com­po­nent of European aggres­sion, the Chinese did not use it to dom­i­nate the rest of the world as the weak mind­ed, uncul­tured Europeans did.
It was depraved indif­fer­ence and a cal­lous lack of moral­i­ty which caused the cap­ture, trans­porta­tion and enslave­ment of African peo­ple here in the west­ern world.
It is that same sub-human lack of con­sci­en­tious­ness which caused the dev­as­ta­tion Europe wrought on Africa.

Jim crow laws, and the per­pet­u­a­tion of racial stereo­types still alive and well in America Israel, Canada, Britain and all across Europe are stub­born ves­tiges of a peo­ple who decid­ed the way to world dom­i­na­tion is guar­an­teed through phys­i­cal force and phys­i­o­log­i­cal warfare.
The scourge of police aggres­sion we are wit­ness­ing against peo­ple of col­or in America is not new.
The num­ber one issue of the time dur­ing During Dr. King’s life­time was police treat­ment of Blacks.
Over fifty years lat­er the num­ber one issue fac­ing Black peo­ple in America is Police abuse.

Notwithstanding, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that police aggres­sion on blacks and poor whites hap­pens because the Monied Oligarchy wants it so.
The so-called white mid­dle-class giv­en time will real­ize they too will be the next vic­tims of the same aggression.
Hopefully by then it will not be too late to do some­thing about it.

White Supremacy as a pol­i­cy is not sus­tain­able for much longer.
The resid­ual embers of white priv­i­lege some cling to even­tu­al­ly will have seri­ous con­se­quences for the holders.
Why does a cop feel it’s accept­able to toss around a 15-year-old girl, scant­i­ly dressed in bathing attire then kneel­ing in her back as if she was an ani­mal to be subdued?
Why did a cop feel com­fort­able enough to fire 8 bul­lets killing, a 50-year-old man run­ning away with no place to go?
What makes a cop use a banned choke-hold on a man killing him for sell­ing un-taxed cigarettes?
The tragedy for the vic­tims of some of these assaults is that they con­tin­ue to buy into the notion of peace with­out justice.

This behav­ior is rem­i­nis­cent of blacks being blud­geoned by police because they dared to sit at lunch coun­ters wait­ing to be served.
It is the same mind­set which caused black stu­dents to be beat­en and spat upon for dar­ing to want an education.
Eric Casebolt obvi­ous­ly arrived on scene intent on show­ing the black kids they were not human , they did not belong there. Never mind that he had no idea who lived where.
This is what Blacks com­plain about daily.
Black and white per­son in con­flict, black per­son call the police, cop arrives auto­mat­i­cal­ly defaults to the white per­son as the complainant.
The Black per­son is auto­mat­i­cal­ly in the wrong in their minds.
Many peo­ple have sug­gest­ed that cops should at least have a bach­e­lors degree going forward.
Nonsense!!
Many of their boss­es who write the laws have PhD’s, yet they are the most ignorant.
Eric Casebolt has since resigned. He most like­ly will nev­er be charged for assault­ing those young people.
This will allow him to lay low for some time and soon anoth­er hick-town will hire him to police the streets, where he will once again con­tin­ue to assault those he wants to bully.

Τhe Editorial Board of the Gleaner com­pa­ny has every right to be crit­i­cal of whomev­er it choos­es to cri­tique and crit­i­cize. In fact Editorials are opin­ions, blogs, of the writer’s views and biases.
Editorials do not take away from the legit­i­ma­cy or the authen­tic­i­ty of the Publication.
For Years now the Editorial board of the Gleaner com­pa­ny has been stri­dent­ly a part of the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the People’s National Party. That too is okay, in fact I recall a time when the board was high­ly sup­port­ive of the Labor Party’s policies.
What I take issue with is the inabil­i­ty of the Gleaner’s Editorial writ­ers to tell the truth. When you dis­tort the truth you give up the right to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Of course that time may have already passed for the once high­ly respect­ed Gleaner Company.

Monday June 8^th 2015.…
THE JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP), we can con­firm, con­tin­ues to face a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. This is reflect­ed in the par­ty’s inabil­i­ty, or worse, unwill­ing­ness, to artic­u­late clear, coher­ent pol­i­cy options, or sen­si­bly cri­tique and debate those being pur­sued by the Government.
The lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the par­ty’s lazi­ness, if not intel­lec­tu­al malaise, was last week’s state­ment by its gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Horace Chang, on the ongo­ing wage nego­ti­a­tions between pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers and their employ­er, the Government. It was dis­tin­guished by its trite­ness, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is too often the case with dec­la­ra­tions by shad­ow ministers.

Crisis of leadership?
What Country is this writer liv­ing in ? Even as I ask the ques­tion I know it is some­what sil­ly , con­sid­er­ing that we are now liv­ing in the Information age. Regardless of where one live, it is com­mon knowl­edge that Jamaica has a cri­sis of lead­er­ship, which has noth­ing to do with the oppo­si­tion party.
The Writer seem to be pro­ject­ing the very Achilles heel of the Governing PNP onto the JLP.
The pro­pa­gan­da piece went on to say .
The admin­is­tra­tion of which Mr Chang was a mem­ber in 2010 entered into an eco­nom­ic-sup­port agree­ment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that quick­ly ran aground because of the Government’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to make some of the required hard choic­es. The new admin­is­tra­tion has been doing much bet­ter since 2012, includ­ing in meet­ing the IMF’s bench­mark pri­ma­ry bal­ance of 7.5 per cent of GDP, which has placed the debt on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry. An over­val­ued Jamaican dol­lar has been adjust­ing. The cur­rent account deficit has declined from above 12 per cent to sin­gle dig­it; infla­tion has mod­er­at­ed, com­ing close to that of major trad­ing part­ners; the coun­try’s glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness indices have improved.

No men­tion of the fact that when the Bruce Golding Administration took office it was left with zero option but to enter into an agree­ment with the IMF.
The nation was broke and in chaos after an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years of mis­man­age­ment and fis­cal sui­cide led by Omar Davies.
The writer spoke about the agree­ment quote : that quick­ly ran aground because of the Government’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to make some of the required hard choices.
Those hard choic­es of which the writer speaks is the then Government’s refusal to inflict the inevitable pain which would occur had it con­tin­ued adher­ing to the agreement.
Ironically the Simpson Miller Administration has no such reser­va­tion about the pain the peo­ple feel, as long as the IMF tar­gets are met.
In fact con­form­ing to and reach­ing set dead­lines have been bal­anced on the backs of ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple, who are forced to live with wage freeze, esca­lat­ing food and ser­vice charges and run-away inflation.

As an opin­ion writer I try my very best to state only facts, even as total objec­tiv­i­ty may be miss­ing from some of what I have to say. For that I am guilty , I too have my biases.
It is indeed disin­gen­u­ous for the writer to adopt a blink­ered posi­tion on the true facts by intimating.Quote:  But the Government was, in part, able to keep a lid on the fis­cal accounts by main­tain­ing a wage freeze, when the more sus­tain­able, but polit­i­cal­ly far more dif­fi­cult option would be to elim­i­nate around 15,000 pub­lic-sec­tor jobs. Indeed, Audley Shaw, the shad­ow finance min­is­ter, has now agreed that job cuts, done foren­si­cal­ly, are advisable.

Unleashing the full effects of adher­ence to IMF tar­gets onto ordi­nary Jamaicans was uncon­scionable, even as the Miller Administration kept pub­lic sec­tor work­ers con­fined to a wage freeze.
Of course a pub­lic sec­tor down­size is and must be a part of any seri­ous attempt at fix­ing Jamaica’s debt prob­lem. There are ways to accom­plish­ing that with­out arbi­trar­i­ly tak­ing a scalpel to the pub­lic sec­tor rolls.

This can be achieved if the Administration real­is­ti­cal­ly deci­dide to elim­i­nate the vast amount of polit­i­cal patron­age-hires it has engaged in.
The Administration can also cut employ­ees through attri­tion result­ing from retire­ment. Neither of these two options are par­tic­u­lar­ly painful to any­one except those who weren’t sup­posed to be on the pay­roll in the first place.
The Editorial board is doing a ter­ri­ble dis-ser­vice to the Jamaican peo­ple, many of whom still believe any­thing com­ing from the news­pa­per is Gospel.
This non­sense had noth­ing to do with Andrew Holness the JLP leader and the board knows it, how­ev­er they will not be guid­ed by truth in their quest to defame and slur.
Editorial: JLP’s Leadership Crisis

The Government is being real­ly coy in the way it approach­es these negotiations.
They knew full well that 6% for police would not be well received.
The Government is also aware that what they offered teach­ers would be reject­ed as well .
In essence the govt decid­ed not to nego­ti­ate with itself.
A 7% increase up from 6% makes a mock­ery of the process and the people.
What makes the offers insult­ing is that these work­ers have had their wages frozen in place for years, while infla­tion some months have reached an astound­ing 9.70% >
This means pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are rapid­ly slid­ing below the pover­ty line…

the Government has some seri­ous choic­es to make. In addi­tion to Police who have start­ed sick-out actions, some of the nation’s teach­ers have already start­ed two hour on the job demon­stra­tions. The Nations Doctors on the pub­lic pay­roll have indi­cat­ed that they aren’t feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly healthy.
There are over 40.000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers with whom the Government still needs to meet on salary issues.
The Government has includ­ed some $165 bil­lion in the ²⁰¹⁵⁄₁₆ bud­get for wages and salaries, which is four per cent high­er than last year’s wage bill, accord­ing to the Jamaica Observer report­ing. The prob­lem with that increase is that the last wage bill was not last fis­cal year.
Public sec­tor work­ers who have been on a wage freeze deserve a pay increase, at least to off-set the cost of gal­lop­ing infla­tion. The infla­tion rate fluc­tu­ates from a report­ed 4% on the low end, to a 9.70% depend­ing on the month.

The gov­ern­ment can­not be in the busi­ness of pass­ing IMF tests for the sake of pass­ing tests.
Of course it is impor­tant to meet tar­get­ed goals !
It is dou­bly impor­tant to rec­og­nize that mere­ly meet­ing those goal does not advance the foot-ball down the field , meet­ing them sim­ply keep you on the field.
At some point in time the Government will have to come up with a game-plan that does­n’t just keep the team on the field but one that depicts a path to a poten­tial win.
Meeting IMF tar­gets is good for the Fund, bad for the work­ers and the nation.

Opposition JLP Member of Parliament Darrel Vaz summed up Barbadian David Simmons succinctly.
Vaz stat­ed that David Simmons, a Barbadian, does not under­stand the Jamaican soci­ety, not­ing that once the infor­ma­tion came out there would be some peo­ple who would always hold the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed infor­ma­tion to be true.
David Simmons is a for­mer Chief Justice from the Island of Barbados . He is one of a three mem­ber pan­el assem­bled to hear evi­dence in the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces in May of 2010 as they entered to seize Christopher Coke, who was want­ed by the United States Government.
Coke is present­ly serv­ing a lengthy sen­tence in a Federal facil­i­ty in the US.

Vaz recent­ly demand­ed an apol­o­gy from Simmons for reveal­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions in open sit­ting of the Tivoli Inquiry that Coke was sight­ed at his house pri­or to being arrest­ed. The infor­ma­tion was alleged­ly gleaned from a police sta­tion diary. Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake tes­ti­fied that bit of intel­li­gence was nev­er substantiated.
Vaz was Minister with respon­si­bil­i­ty for Information at the time, in the Bruce Golding led Administration.

Despite Vaz’s legit­i­mate demand for a pub­lic apol­o­gy from Simmons, which under the cir­cum­stances are clear­ly war­rant­ed , Simmons main­tained rather arro­gant­ly that there is noth­ing to apol­o­gize for.
“I find it iron­ic, to put it at its low­est, and cer­tain­ly not in con­gru­ence with com­mon sense, that I should be pil­lo­ried by Mr Vaz and asked to apol­o­gize to him for hav­ing his name and rep­u­ta­tion cleared and vin­di­cat­ed,”. Simmons said.

Simmons was not done. “In the cir­cum­stances, of course, I do not apol­o­gise to Mr Vaz; there’s noth­ing to apol­o­gise for. His name and rep­u­ta­tion had been cleared by that evi­dence yes­ter­day. He should be grate­ful it came in,”.

In oth­er words, though he erred egre­gious­ly by impugn­ing Vaz’s char­ac­ter with what must have been clear to him at the time, was pure­ly unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions or hearsay, he wants Vaz to be grate­ful that infor­ma­tion sur­faced lat­er which cleared his name.

This is pure unmit­i­gat­ed arro­gance and ignorance.
What would it have tak­en for Simmons to say he was sor­ry which was clear­ly appro­pri­ate under the circumstances?
In response Vaz fired back at Simmons.
 “In essence, I want to thank Sir David for hit­ting me in my head with a sledge­ham­mer and putting a Band-Aid on my wound and then claim that he has healed me,” Vaz said.“This is what has hap­pened to me and my fam­i­ly. He’s being disingenuous,”.

Simmons through­out the Inquiry has not done a par­tic­u­lar­ly good job of con­ceal­ing what appears to be dis­dain, not just for the Jamaican peo­ple but for the process­es of our country.
Even as he walks a fine line pre­tend­ing to be emphat­ic with res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens.
I have pre­vi­ous­ly voiced those con­cerns in this very forum, argu­ing that based on those obser­va­tions I would have no respect for the find­ings of this inquiry.
It is incon­ceiv­able for any­one watch­ing these pro­ceed­ings to come away feel­ing otherwise.
It would not be far-fetched to imply that Simmons is mere­ly mir­ror­ing the sen­ti­ments of many of his coun­try-men, some of whom have con­fessed they were taught to hate Jamaicans in school.

This may be a very good time for Jamaicans to step back and re-eval­u­ate the lure of a Caribbean Court Of Justice and it’s impli­ca­tions for our Nation.
We should now seek to extri­cate our­selves from the British Privy Council, which by the way is not par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled at hav­ing to deal with our issues. We must first devel­op our own sys­tem of Justice free and unat­tached from the rest of the Caribbean.
That prospect is on the dis­tant Horizon. We are a long way from get­ting to that stage, but we should begin that process now.

It should also be not­ed that at a time when the Administration is cry­ing broke, unable to pay pub­lic sec­tor work­ers a liv­able wage it has so far spent well over $350 mil­lion on the Tivoli Commission.
This is a most reck­less stew­ard­ship of pub­lic resources when Jamaicans of all stripes are ful­ly aware that the PNP mono­lith­ic as a part did not give the secu­ri­ty forces the exten­sion it need­ed to con­sol­i­date gains made after the Tivoli event.
The Party’s state­ments then was, “we did not want the secu­ri­ty forces to abuse citizens”.
With that state­ment the PNP cast its lot with Jamaica’s crim­i­nals against the Jamaican state and the secu­ri­ty forces.
They did so to deny the nation’s secu­ri­ty forces access to it’s net­work of Garrisons .
That was an act of Treason in my estimation.

The People’s National Party should have been dis­band­ed at that time, nev­er­the­less a few months lat­er the peo­ple of Jamaica returned them to power.
This Inquiry like Simmons is a farce , it should be seen for what it is, an attempt to cur­ry favor and hold state pow­er at the expense of the peo­ple’s intelligence.

REALLY ?

How can a Socialist Government take a Scalpel to the bloat­ed pub­lic sec­tor when it’s entire phi­los­o­phy is one of Government doing for peo­ple what they should do for themselves.

The present Administration does not under­stand how a mar­ket econ­o­my works, as such it becomes impos­si­ble for the coun­try to claw it’s way out of the present cri­sis it’ faces.
Anyone who believes the present path dic­tat­ed by the IMF is a path to rebuild­ing the Nation’s econ­o­my is delusional.
The path laid out by the fund is designed to ensure the coun­try is able to pay back to the fund what it owes with interest.
Of course if the peo­ple were wide-eyed they would real­ize this is an unsus­tain­able path to nowhere.
Wherever the IMF is hap­py social dis­or­der becomes the nat­ur­al order.
I wish the Editor would explain how this path will lead to pros­per­i­ty, or even a seri­ous reduc­tion of the nations debt.

HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS TO THE SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT OPERATING IN KINGSTON AND THE ADMINISTRATIONS OPERATIVES AT THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE GLEANER COMPANY.

(1) REDUCE CRIME
You accom­plish this by telling your sup­port­ers that there are no safe havens any place, in any Garrison con­trolled by your party.
Then dis­man­tle the Garrisons.
No PM Miller, Garrisons do not have to have walls.
Equip, train, and pay the police.
Cut the bloat­ed pub­lic sec­tor workforce.
Yes that includes polit­i­cal hacks who are a drain on the coun­try’s mea­ger resources, . Yes fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends are included.
Pass laws com­men­su­rate with the rapid­ly chang­ing times . Penalties should put seri­ous offend­ers behind bars for long peri­ods of time . Seek to reha­bil­i­tate non-vio­lent offenders.

(2) ELIMINATE BUREAUCRACY.
Cut unnec­es­sary restric­tions on imports, there­by remov­ing the pro­tec­tion accord­ed cer­tain sec­tors of the pri­vate sector.
A pri­vate sec­tor should be open­ly com­pet­i­tive. Those who can­not com­pete will be weed­ed out.
An open com­pet­i­tive pri­vate sec­tor dri­ves down prices to consumers.
(3) ELIMINATE CORRUPTION.
Remove fam­i­ly friends and loy­al­ists from the pub­lic sec­tor pay­roll. Slash non-essen­tial work­ers , orga­nize to get them loans so they may go to school or do start up businesses.
(4) LOWER TAXES.
Self explanatory.
(5) BROADEN TAX NET.
Bring more small oper­a­tors into com­pli­ance this will relieve the bur­den on PAYE workers.
(6) DIVERSIFY ENERGY SOURCES.
Jamaica has no short­age of sun and wind. Have Industry and Commerce get off their fat rear-ends and go seek investors who are inter­est­ed in help­ing to devel­op our Solar and wind capa­bil­i­ties. There is no rea­son Jamaica should be addict­ed to dirty oil.
(7) MAINTAIN AND BUILD THE NATION’S VITAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
Developing roads , water and elec­tric­i­ty , reduces urban sprawl, encour­ages rur­al devel­op­ment and builds the economy.
Adopt these sim­ple steps and watch Private sec­tor invest­ment flood our coun­try. Do these and guar­an­teed we have to turn some investors away.
There is no rea­son Jamaicans should be liv­ing in a pover­ty-strick­en crime infest­ed hell-hole.
That is how a nation is built , not on pseudo/​socialist give-aways.

The Jamaican Government through it’s Attorney General Patrick Atkinson, has secured an Injunction from the Supreme Court intend­ed to force sick police offi­cers back to work.
The gist of the Injunction is that the police is to cease and desist from it’s indus­tri­al action for a peri­od of 28 days and return to the bar­gain­ing table with the Government.
Sounds like a fair bit of adju­di­ca­tion right?
Not so fast… Atkinson buoyed by what he thought was the final blud­geon­ing tool with which he would crush the low­ly rank-and-file cops, declared that fail­ing to com­ply with the Injunction would be tan­ta­mount to con­tempt of court with penal­ty includ­ing Government con­fis­ca­tion of police offi­cers property.
Clearly this cor­rupt Government of the intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged Simpson Miller is look­ing to start a civ­il war in the Island nation.

Simpson Miller and her band of incom­pe­tents, must know that despite plac­ing it’s func­tionar­ies in crit­i­cal posi­tions of civ­il soci­ety , includ­ing the courts, that it would be ask­ing for war were they to try to enforce that Injunction.
In fact the Jamaican Newspapers are report­ing that over 1,000 cops had report­ed sick out of a force of 12.000. After the Injunction was issued over 3.000 offi­cers report­ed sick.
News flash to the lack­eys on the Supreme Court, if a Doctor say the cops are sick, guess what ?
They are sick and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
What cheek?
Confiscation of property?
This Administration, just wel­comed Barack Obama the President of the United States to Jamaica. The Central Intelligence Agency is patent­ly aware that Jamaica is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt. The Agency is also aware that the régime does not sup­port or respect police offi­cers and the rule of law.
Why did Obama legit­imize the Portia Simpson Miller Government by vis­it­ing Jamaica at this time?
There is no oth­er expla­na­tion oth­er than his desire to push the Homosexual Agenda on Jamaica.

The Police Federation, the Union which rep­re­sents Rank and file mem­bers of the depart­ment had already indi­cat­ed it“s will­ing­ness to go back to the bar­gain­ing table to dis­cuss the issue of salaries and ben­e­fits. The Government for it’s part, had all the time in the world to come up with a pack­age for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers that was less insulting.
Using the courts as an intend­ed tool of intim­i­da­tion to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers is dis­grace­ful. It’s also illu­mi­nat­ing to the nation the con­tempt the Kleptomaniac inept admin­is­tra­tion has for ordi­nary work­ing people.

According to a reli­able sources the infla­tion rate in Jamaica was record­ed at 4.40 per­cent in April of 2015.
Over a 12 month peri­od Jamaica’s Inflation rate fluc­tu­ates between a low of 4 and a high of 9.7%.
A pay increase of 3% in the first year does not even cov­er the cost of inflation.
Adopting a pos­ture of a plan­ta­tion own­er to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers is not exact­ly a pre­scrip­tion for social order.
It is impor­tant that these very Police Officers, Nurses, Teachers and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, remem­ber the way the Government respond­ed to their legit­i­mate demand for a liv­able wage.
The cops demand is even more just, in light of what they face daily.
They should nev­er for­get nor for­give this out­ra­geous affront.

Opposition Spokesperson on National Security Derrick Smith has unleashed a scathing response to the Government’s Injunction in the Courts designed to force mem­bers of the police depart­ment on sick-out back to work.
I gen­er­al­ly nev­er agree with any­thing Smith had to say. I was­n’t con­vinced that Smith who pre­vi­ous­ly held the National Security Portfolio was suf­fi­cient­ly sup­port­ive of the Police.
Many of my friends dis­agree with me on that but I reserve the right to be wrong.
I must admit how­ev­er that Smith’s com­ments are spot on.

SMITH STATED:
The tem­po­rary injunc­tion the Government has secured from the Supreme Court bar­ring the police from tak­ing indus­tri­al action not only serves to inten­si­fy the esca­lat­ing wage nego­ti­a­tion cri­sis, but brings the “arro­gance and bul­ly­ing tac­tics being employed by the Government into sharp focus”.

“The Government’s move to com­pel the police back to work by way of an injunc­tion will not improve the deep­en­ing indus­tri­al rela­tions row and bring us no clos­er to restor­ing nor­mal­i­ty.” “In fact, the injunc­tion only serves to fur­ther pro­voke the police and inten­si­fy the antag­o­nism that char­ac­ter­izes the rela­tion­ship between the police and the Government at this time. Instead of resort­ing to bul­ly tac­tics and fur­ther oppress­ing the hard-work­ing men and women of the con­stab­u­lary, the Government needs to move quick­ly in mak­ing a bet­ter offer and ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at a settlement,”.

My sen­ti­ments exact­ly , but what real­ly excit­ed me about Derrick Smith’s com­ments is this.
“What I find most dis­turb­ing is that the Government sat seem­ing­ly unper­turbed and allowed the sit­u­a­tion to esca­late to the point where the Police Federation felt it had no option but to mobi­lize its mem­bers in stag­ing a sick-out. What is even more dis­turb­ing is that the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, who, if no one else in the Government does, should have the inter­ests of the police at heart, has expend­ed no dis­cernible effort in advanc­ing their wel­fare, but saw it fit to resort to bul­ly­ing tac­tics on Tuesday by call­ing on them to return to work.”

Not only has Bunting showed he does not care about the plight of the work­ing cops on the beat, some of whom pro­vide 24 hour secu­ri­ty to him at the risk to their own lives, he total­ly mis­quot­ed the per­cent­age Government offered to rank and file cops.
If Minister Bunting had noth­ing pos­i­tive to say all he had to do is sim­ply remain silent.

A great Jamaican proverb taught me by my great aunt is (yu must tek sleep mark death) .
The police depart­ment is a large block of votes. Police offi­cers have incred­i­ble sway and influ­ence on mem­bers of their fam­i­lies, that includes how they vote.
I hope they learn and have mem­o­ries like Elephants.
In some con­stituen­cies the dif­fer­ence between win­ning and los­ing is a few dozen votes. The votes of offi­cers can be the dif­fer­ence in return­ing Jamaica to sanity.
Whether Derrick Smith is gen­uine in his broad­side against the Government, or he is sim­ply pos­tur­ing, his com­ments are nonethe­less correct.

The Police depart­ment has over 12.000 mem­bers . Members of the Gazetted Ranks who are mem­bers of the civ­il ser­vice are not sub­ject to this wage dis­pute. Rank and file mem­bers must extri­cate them­selves from the typ­i­cal “licky-licky “men­tal­i­ty which has char­ac­ter­ized the way they look at the polit­i­cal game and make deci­sions that will ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit them and their fam­i­lies going forward.
This par­ty has nev­er placed nation­al secu­ri­ty on the front burner.
This wage dis­pute is not the only indi­ca­tor that the admin­is­tra­tion does not care about them.
Members com­plain they do not have uni­forms nor boots , how dis­grace­ful is that?
The Peoples’ National Party has always been a par­ty which want­ed crime to flour­ish as a kind of a “wink-and-a-nod” to it’s sup­port­ers when they are in office.
It’s a kind of pay back to the peo­ple. One of the many unscrupu­lous things they do to win and hold onto state power.
The Police have a choice to make.…