There has been a not so subtle indoctrination of the Jamaican public, which I believe began in the ’70s when I was a boy. Folks older than I am who agree with me, may actually have evidence that it started earlier. I am not opposed to the name of leaders being given prominence, particularly if they are deceased. I don’t believe in overkill for psychological, tribal reasons.

So you enter the coun­try by way of the Nation’s Capital, and you arrive at the Norman Manley International Airport. Leaving the Airport, you dri­ve on the,(you guessed it)the Norman Manley Highway, which links the Airport to the Harbour View round-about. Drive up to the University, and you have the Norman Manley Law school; oh there is The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts oper­ates from a sin­gle cam­pus, in Kingston, Jamaica_​w.
There is the Edna Manley clin­ic in Grants Pen Kingston 8. There is the Edna Manley gallery, a spe­cial Gallery ded­i­cat­ed to her life with­in the National Gallery of Jamaica. There is the Norman Manley High School in Kingston. The National Housing Trust (NHT) head office build­ing in New Kingston was renamed in hon­or of Michael Manley. The list goes on and on in fair­ness to the Manleys; oth­er Politicians have had their names attached to notable sites through­out our coun­try, none how­ev­er to the extent that the Manley name has been plas­tered through­out Jamaica’s nation­al life. Many oth­er sites bear the names of notable Jamaicans. Nethesole place is the area around Jamaica’s National bank bear­ing anoth­er People’s National Party func­tionary name.

Yet when the sug­ges­tion was made to rename Ocean Boulevard in hon­or of Edward Seaga for his con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try, PNP Councillors object­ed. Mister Seaga said then; he was not inter­est­ed in hav­ing the boule­vard renamed in his hon­or because of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the pro­pos­al. In light of the afore­men­tioned, it seems there is ample evi­dence of a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign to name and rename every sin­gle mon­u­ment street and build­ing in Jamaica after the Manley’s or some oth­er PNP mem­ber past and present. Just recent­ly, Paul Burke made the absurd sug­ges­tion that the Donald Sangster’s Airport in Montego Bay should be renamed in hon­or of anoth­er deceased PNP mem­ber of par­lia­ment, Allan George Coombs, who died in 1969.

Edna Manley

In a coun­try small­er than the state of Connecticut, it is a bit cloy­ing and down­right stu­pid to have so many places and things named after one fam­i­ly, which brings us to my first con­tention that this was nev­er an inno­cent hap­pen­ing but a sys­tem­at­ic attempt to trib­al­ize the entire coun­try by nam­ing every­thing after People’s National Party Functionaries.
Literally, every gar­ri­son under PNP con­trol is named after PNP past and present.
With this trib­al polit­i­cal, men­tal, and psy­cho­log­i­cal bom­bard­ment, is it any won­der our peo­ple can­not extri­cate them­selves from the Liberal social­ist politics/​policies of the Manleys through Patterson now to Miller?

Some will ask, Huh? How do you make that kind of con­nec­tion? Psychologists under­stand the impor­tance of that kind of bom­bard­ment, the visu­al, the audio, they do impact the way we behave. Not so long ago, the Jamaican Police embarked on a mis­sion of remov­ing murals of crim­i­nal Dons from build­ings and oth­er places with­in cer­tain inner-city com­mu­ni­ties in our country.
They are final­ly start­ing to under­stand the impact those murals have on peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly the young and impres­sion­able. The People’s National Party under­stands this; that’s why they keep win­ning nation­al elec­tions to the coun­try’s detri­ment, of course.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has stead­fast­ly refused to answer ques­tions from the Press on any of her pol­i­cy deci­sions. The Prime Minister who has called for remov­ing the Queen of England as head of State has been chid­ed with hav­ing monar­chist desires of her own. As the chief ser­vant of the peo­ple the Prime Minster is duty bound to answer ques­tions posed by the Press . The peo­ple have a right to acqui­esce or dis­agree with her pol­i­cy deci­sions and direc­tions, after all Jamaica is sup­posed to be a Democracy,.…..right?

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Refusing to answer ques­tions smacks of the actions of a Monarch who Rules by decree. It is not the first time that Miller has demon­strat­ed her dis­dain for the peo­ple by refus­ing to answer ques­tions even regard­ing the most seri­ous issues of National import. Trafigura, Cuban Ligh-bulb, Richard Azan are just a few of the cru­cial issues which any world leader would be forced to respond to, or step aside if they chose not to. In one case Mrs Miller told reporters to go ask the PNP in ref­er­ence to her par­ty which she heads. Who bet­ter to ask than the Party’s Head and Prime Minister? Mrs Miller gives ammu­ni­tion to crit­ics who argue she is inca­pable of artic­u­lat­ing a pol­i­cy posi­tion and as such she shuns the cam­eras. Additionally she stat­ed that she will not talk her way out of office. Ironically Portia in Oppposition was nev­er at a loss for words. There nev­er was a short­age of inart­ful crass coarse lan­guage com­ing from her.

Under no cir­cum­stance is it accept­able for a ser­vant of the peo­ple ‚who acts on behalf of the peo­ple to refuse to explain to them, actions she/​he takes on their behalf. In the case of Mrs Miller it is even more imper­a­tive that she makes her­self avail­able to the Press, that the peo­ple may have a feel for her pol­i­cy direc­tions. The fact is Portia Simpson Miller has lim­it­ed or ques­tion­able skills, as such the peo­ple have a right to say “yes or no ” to the deci­sions she makes sup­pos­ed­ly on their behalf.

The ques­tion then becomes, “why does she show such dis­re­gard for the Press and by exten­sion the peo­ple, know­ing full well that the office comes with the annoy­ing Press ask­ing ques­tions on behalf of the peas­ants, I mean the peo­ple? I believe the answer is sim­ply because she can!! The Jamaican peo­ple have been immense­ly gen­er­ous to Mrs Miller, they have reward­ed her with the high­est polit­i­cal office in the coun­try, an office many includ­ing myself believe she is gross­ly ill-equipped for . Let me has­ten to say my belief in her unsuit­abil­i­ty has noth­ing to do with the fact that she does not have a Masters or a Doctorate. There are more than enough fools hold­ing those Degrees. I look at the con­stituen­cy she has rep­re­sent­ed for decades and I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that she did not deserve a pro­mo­tion. I lis­ten to her and she has no con­cept of pol­i­cy. I watch her and she has no direc­tion for the country.

Because she has been so lucky, she owes it to the peo­ple who unwit­ting­ly empow­ered her, to show them some regard. Or does she believe she will be ele­vat­ed to Monarch as she was to PM mere­ly by kiss­ing babies and telling the mass­es she cares? One thing is cer­tain, with Jamaicans you nev­er know , she may know some­thing I don’t. It is time the Jamaican peo­ple take their future into their own hands and stop cheer­ing the Empress in her no-exis­tent new clothes.

Old Jamaica proverb “you lie with dogs you rise with fleas”. 

Sometime ago I wrote an arti­cle in which I cau­tioned Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington not to cozy up to the Reactionary Forces arrayed against the Jamaican peo­ple at Fagan Avenue. I argued then that they would encour­age him to dis­man­tle the police force then dump him. Ellington has embarked on a path of rad­i­cal change for the Force geared he argues, at the mod­ern­iza­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of the Agency. Many of the changes he enact­ed came at the cha­grin of mem­bers of his depart­ment and to for­mer mem­bers like myself. For exam­ple, the week­ly Force Orders is a pri­vate com­mu­nique between the Commissioner and his offi­cers. The gen­er­al pub­lic has no expec­ta­tion of access to such communication.

Commissioner Owen Ellington

Companies and Agencies whether pub­lic of pri­vate have inter­nal mem­os which are for the infor­ma­tion of employ­ees only . That argu­ment is more true for the JCF which is an Agency charged with Crime pre­ven­tion and National Security in a broad­er spec­trum. I thought it beyond the pale when Mister Ellington decid­ed to make it pub­lic. The Police Force Orders details com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the Commissioner and his offi­cers as well as move­ment of per­son­nel. I believed and argued it was a fun­da­men­tal breach of secu­ri­ty do so. Today as more and more offi­cer are killed in Jamaica, my con­tention takes on more res­o­nance. I believe Commissioner Ellington went over­board in attempt­ing trans­paren­cy to assuage and respond to the Criminal Rights Fraternity, Headquartered at Fagan Avenue, and in par­tic­u­lar to cur­ry favor with Carolyn Gomes. What Ellington did not know was that as soon as he had giv­en Gomes and her acolytes what they want­ed they would call for his head.

Criminal Rights Advocate Carolyn Gomes

It did not take long for my words to come to pass. JFJ Opens Fire On Ellington.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​1​2​3​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​2​.​h​tml. Executive direc­tor of Jamaicans for Justice, Dr Carolyn Gomes, has tar­get­ed Ellington, blunt­ly call­ing for his head.She charged that Ellington has failed to keep the mur­der rate under con­trol and improve the police clear-up rate for murder.“He has presided over the high­est cumu­la­tive rate of police fatal shoot­ings ever seen in Jamaica …. It is time for him to go,” said Gomes.“We have seen three months in which more than one per­son a day was killed by the police, cul­mi­nat­ing in the killing of 36 per­sons by the police in the month of October,” she added.

I have con­sis­tent­ly warned that Gomes is not doing what she does because she cares about any­one but Carolyn Gomes. She has received large sums of cash from for­eign coun­tries like Germany and oth­ers. No one both­ers to ask what is it that these coun­tries want in return? Jamaicans are either too stu­pid or has their heads too far up their own ass­es. Too pre­oc­cu­pied with their own sense of self-impor­tance, to rec­og­nize that coun­tries do not have friends , they have inter­ests. What is their inter­ests in Jamaica ?

So here’s a thought , dis­man­tle the secu­ri­ty forces you dis­man­tle the rule of law. Dismantle the rule of law anar­chy prevails,anarchy equals no growth, no invest­ments, no pro­duc­tion, per­pet­u­al bor­row­ing. Look at what they did to Haiti the first black nation in the west­ern hemi­sphere. They made sure Haiti would not be a coun­try blacks could look at with pride, they nev­er for­gave the Haitians for win­ning their inde­pen­dence with bul­lets and guns. Jamaicans on the oth­er hand has allowed their elit­ist atti­tudes to cloud their vision to what’s real­ly going on . It is a clever sleigh of hand that has them com­plete­ly mes­mer­ized. I am here to look out for your Human Rights. So Gomes sows the seeds of anar­chy and gang­ster-ism, effec­tive­ly had the police shack­led, offers sanc­tu­ary to the crim­i­nals and when mur­ders gets out of hand she blames the police and calls for the head of the Commissioner. That is a bril­liant plot which she did not hatch alone, I have been warn­ing about her actions for two years in these blogs. Anyone doubt­ing this needs to pay atten­tion this is com­ing from high­er up than Carolyn Gomes. Look for crime to climb much high­er in the months to come, it’s all part of the plan.

It is incred­i­ble what harm one per­son can cause in a coun­try like Jamaica. A coun­try which is impressed with a light skinned mulat­to with DR behind her name!!!

There are some facts which are irrefutable , one such fact is that crime spi­rals out of con­trol when the People’s National Party is in pow­er. As to cau­sa­tion , I am aware there are var­i­ous expla­na­tions depend­ing on who you ask . For PNP sup­port­ers, that is as a result of the CIA, the Labor Party or both, desta­bi­liza­tion, the tooth fairy or all the above.

Me ? I rather look at the facts and num­bers . It bears remem­ber­ing that for the last 4 decades the peo­ple’s National Party has had state con­trol for 28 years. The ques­tion in syn­op­sis then becomes “Is Jamaica bet­ter off now, than it was 40 years ago”? As Ronald Reagan asked America pri­or to the 1980 General elec­tions, that is the test, “Are you bet­ter off”?.

With the excep­tionof the brief respite between 1980 – 1988 when Seaga returned the coun­try to a path of pros­per­i­ty and low­er crime and the 4 years under Golding and Holness, Jamaicans have self­ish­ly and stu­pid­ly turned what was once the stan­dard by which the Caribbean was judged to the pari­ah of the Caribbean.

Neither of the two polit­i­cal par­ties are with­out sin, the labor par­ty after Hugh Shearer, depart­ed from the plat­form of no tol­er­ance to crime and cor­rup­tion, lit­er­al­ly mak­ing itself impos­si­ble to dif­fer­en­ti­ate from the PNP. Of course when it comes to gut­ter pol­i­tics the labor par­ty could only play catch-up. The ¹⁸¹⁄₂ year exile from state pow­er is tes­ta­ment to that fact. The labor par­ty was the par­ty which offered peo­ple hope, not hand-outs. Educational oppor­tu­ni­ties through hard work , not crash pro­gram. Economic growth through low crime. Understanding of course that the biggest deter­rent to growth is crime and cor­rup­tion. Once the JLP decid­ed to play ball on the PNP’s turf there was no rea­son to pick them for office, at best the labor par­ty could only be PNP lite. Why buy lite when you can have the real thing.

So the PNP built 3 gar­risons to every one the JLP had, notice I said had, not built. The JLP could not build Garrisons with­out state pow­er and state mon­ey. The PNP had and did. So when we look at why the PNP is per­pet­u­al­ly in con­trol of state pow­er, we need look no fur­ther than the homogoneus com­mu­ni­ties (gar­risons) under their con­trol. The win­ner of these homoge­nous con­stituen­cies are known before a sin­gle vote is cast. In most cas­es the raw vote far exceeds the amount of elec­tors on the vot­ers list. This is over-kill yes , but it is pos­si­ble because of the iron-clad con­trol par­ties have on the machin­ery in these communities.

The result is there are far few­er con­stituen­cies up for grabs, or where the elec­tion real­ly mat­ters. He who con­trols the state purse rules the day, check mate. The PNP has sub­se­quent­ly reduced Jamaica to a beg­gar nation , soaked and drenched in the blood of a peo­ple not smart enough, or too scared to extri­cate them­selves from its cult-like ten­ta­cles. As the coun­try’s sit­u­a­tion gets more des­per­ate they delude them­selves that just over the hori­zon is sal­va­tion, the next oasis. Deluding them­selves like a sun-stroke wan­der­er stum­bling in the desert. Convinced that the mirage they see is an oasis on the horizon.

The coun­try is not get­ting bet­ter, there are no jobs, no oppor­tu­ni­ties, crime and gang activ­i­ty are on the rise. The lead­ers fat­ten them­selves while the elites who live above Cross-Roads pre­ten­tious­ly and gra­tu­itous­ly rev­el in the beau­ty of the Empresses new clothes. Jamaica is not a devel­oped coun­try, it is not on a sus­tained path to first world sta­tus, mere­ly say­ing I love Jamaica does not make a coun­try suc­cess­ful, if that was so Jamaica would be rival­ing Dubai. Jamaicans ‚par­tic­u­lar­ly the new­ly edu­cat­ed ones are the most pre­ten­tious Pharisees. They rather stand around and glee­ful­ly clap and cheer the Empress and her new clothes instead of rec­og­niz­ing that the path the coun­try is on is unsus­tain­able and can only lead to destruction.

This brings us to the crime sit­u­a­tion which is lit­er­al­ly drain­ing the life blood from the coun­try. The year 2010 the secu­ri­ty Forces had most of the Gangs on the run after they rout­ed Christopher Coke from his redoubt in Tivoli Gardens. Mercenaries who had come from far and wide irre­spec­tive of par­ty affil­i­a­tion to aid the don of dons, final­ly felt the pow­er of the state’s secu­ri­ty agen­cies. This was the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time to cement the author­i­ty of the state in root­ing out crim­i­nals and estab­lish­ing once and for all, a zero tol­er­ance for that kind of behavior.

The Commissioner of Police and the Chief of Defence staff of the JDF asked for an exten­sion to solid­i­fy the gains they had made under the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency the Golding Administration had asked for and was grant­ed by the Governor General. To a man, every sin­gle mem­ber of the People’s National Party then in oppo­si­tion vot­ed no. I wrote then that no vote was the biggest betray­al any polit­i­cal par­ty could vis­it on a coun­try. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​845.

Gang activ­i­ty thrives in homoge­nous com­mu­ni­ties (Garrisons)the rul­ing Administration has devel­oped a polit­i­cal net­work of gar­risons which makes it almost assured state pow­er. That is the rea­son the Neanderthal war­rior Portia and her acolytes could not sign on to an exten­sion of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in 2010. Portia and the par­ty she rep­re­sents are rel­e­vant because of gar­risons and all which comes with them. They can­not and will not be the soul­tion to Jamaica’s crime prob­lem. They are the problem.

Two pieces of news caught my eyes in the Jamaica Gleaner today Tuesday November 19^th, thought it was worth com­ment­ing and get­ting a feed-back from you.

1) Dead Wrong: Security Expert Says Police Not Aiming At Right Target To Buck Murder Trend. As dead­ly gang vio­lence con­tin­ues to rage across the island, leav­ing hun­dreds dead since the start of the year, a promi­nent secu­ri­ty con­sul­tant is sug­gest­ing that the author­i­ties are focus­ing on the wrong tar­gets in their bid to break the back of vicious crim­i­nal­i­ty in many com­mu­ni­ties.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​1​1​9​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​1​.​h​tml

2)‘Mind Your Own Business And Look At Rot In Jamaica’ — Bajan Minister Blasts Gleaner For ‘Political Undertones’. A BARBADOS gov­ern­ment min­is­ter has launched a scathing attack on a Sunday Gleaner edi­to­r­i­al, telling the news­pa­per to take its nose out of Bajan affairs and con­cen­trate on the “rot going on in Jamaica”.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​1​1​9​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​2​.​h​tml.

Smith

I will attempt to be brief in my sum­ma­tion of both Articles which I believe are inter-con­nect­ed though not relat­ed. A Jamaican secu­ri­ty expert[sic] argues that the coun­try is look­ing in the wrong places to cur­tail gang activ­i­ty. Robert Finzi-Smith believes hunger is the dri­ving force caus­ing gang activ­i­ty across the coun­try . He coun­ters that though the police have been heavy-hand­ed with gangs and there was a reduc­tion of gang relat­ed crimes it seems those gains are being reversed. Robert Finzi-Smith’s claim to expert-fame is con­sul­tant on crime con­trol who serves as, among oth­er things, direc­tor of safe­ty and secu­ri­ty at the University of Technology.

Danville Inniss

Now to the oth­er sto­ry, The Gleaner Editorial board came under harsh crit­i­cisms from a Minister of Government in the Island Nation of Barbados. Bajan Minister of Industry and International Business Donville Inniss exco­ri­at­ed the Gleaner Editorial page, telling them mind your own busi­ness and look at the rot going on in Jamaica. Barbados is in good hands. The Gleaner’s Editorial page is used to berat­ing Jamaican law enforce­ment, so nat­u­ral­ly it felt at lib­er­ty to lev­el harsh crit­i­cisms at the Royal Barbados Police Force for bring­ing charges against two senior staff mem­bers at theNation news­pa­per over a recent publication”.The pub­li­ca­tion was of two 14 year olds stu­dents hav­ing sex at school.

Bajan author­i­ties have con­fis­cat­ed the trav­el doc­u­ments from the two Journalists. First let me say that even though I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in free speech and the right of a free press, I also under­stand that each coun­try’s laws are dif­fer­ent. The Gleaner not exposed to any real­i­ties but that which obtains in Jamaica , pro­ceed­ed to blast that coun­try’s police sug­gest­ing that the arrests were polit­i­cal. Well they got told where to go. There is no love lost between the two coun­tries , recent­ly the Shanice Myrie case exposed old wounds. Simply put, Bajans respect the rule of law, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in order most Jamaicans don’t. Hence Barbados is tops in edu­ca­tion , it’s econ­o­my is doing pret­ty well and crime is low. Now grant­ed there is a dis­tinct size and pop­u­la­tion dif­fer­ence between the two Islands, Jamaica could take a page from Barbados’ book on how to devel­op a country.

So while a Jamaican glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard tells the police and the nation why they are los­ing the fight against gangs. And while the edi­to­r­i­al page of the Gleaner con­sis­tent­ly lends its voice to the anti-police cho­rus, author­i­ties in Barbadoes stand solid­ly behind their law-enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als. That is where the prob­lem lies . Not because peo­ple are hungry.

Richard Azan mem­ber of Parlaiment for North West Clarendon and for­mer Junior Minister in the Ministry of Transport , Works and Housing was again ele­vat­ed to Cabinet posi­tion. Richard Azan resigned after infor­ma­tion came to light that he in his posi­tion as Member of Parliament for North West Clarendon and as Junior Minister in the min­istry afore­men­tioned, abused his author­i­ty, con­trary to what he is legal­ly empow­ered, to give per­mis­sion for a pri­vate con­trac­tor to build shops on lands inside the refur­bished Spaldings Market, with­out the approval of the local author­i­ty that owned the property.

After the inci­dent came to light the monies which were col­lect­ed and paid to Azans con­stituen­cy office was alleged­ly con­ve­nient­ly returned to the parish coun­cil. For those not under­stand­ing Jamaican Politics let me explain. 1) Azan as mem­ber of par­lia­ment had zero author­i­ty to order con­struc­tion of the shops. That is with­in the author­i­ty of the Clarendon Parish coun­cil. 2) The polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy office has no author­i­ty to col­lect, much less keep rental-fees col­lect­ed from shop oper­a­tors. As such the Contractor General at the time Dirk Harrison rec­om­mend­ed that the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP)Paula Llewelyn prof­fer charges against Richard Azan. As a result of the scan­dal Azan ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion to the Prime Minister Portia Lucreita Simpson Miller.Miller accept­ed Azan’s Resignation and had this to say.

“I have accept­ed his res­ig­na­tion. I wish to place on record our thanks to him for his hard work and com­mit­ment to improv­ing the lives of the peo­ple dur­ing his tenure.” 

Azans res­ig­na­tion let­ter.September 20, 2013
The Most Honourable Portia Simpson Miller, ON, MP Prime Minister 
Office of the Prime Minister 
1 Devon Road 
Kingston 10 
Dear Prime Minister, 
The Contractor General has hand­ed in his report of his inves­ti­ga­tion into the erec­tion of wood­en shops on the periph­ery of the park­ing lot at the Spalding mar­ket. I wish to assure you and the Cabinet, that I received no mon­ey, favours or per­son­al ben­e­fit, finan­cial or oth­er­wise from the erec­tion or rental of the shops by Bryant Construction. My legal team has reviewed the report and advised that the Contractor General has come to cer­tain con­clu­sions not sup­port­ed by the facts and the team has rec­om­mend­ed that the report be chal­lenged. The team has also advised that the Contractor General’s report shows no evi­dence of dis­hon­esty on my part. 
In the cir­cum­stance, I wish to stand down from my min­is­te­r­i­al posi­tion. I will in the mean­time, vig­or­ous­ly fight to clear my name, which has been defamed by the Contractor General’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cor­rup­tion and by utter­ances in sec­tions of the media. 
Yours respect­ful­ly, 
Richard Azan, JP. MP. 

Somehow despite the glar­ing fact that Azan 1)had no author­i­ty to autho­rize the build­ing of the shops or 2) his con­stituen­cy office col­lect­ed and pock­et­ed the fees col­lect­ed from rental of the shops no crim­i­nal charges has been filed by the DPP. The major tenet of the argu­ment for no crim­i­nal charges against Azan I heard is that the monies have been returned. By that log­ic every rob­ber , sim­ply has to return what­ev­er prop­er­ty he/​she steals and no harm no foul. Not to be out­done the Prime Minister reap­point­ed Richard Azan to his for­mer posi­tion. Azan’s rein­state­ment fol­lows a rul­ing by Paula Llewellyn, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), in September that no crim­i­nal charges be laid against him in the Spalding Market issue.

Well what do you know, same old pol­i­tics as usu­al in Jamaica, you scratch my back I scratch yours, some peo­ple are sim­ply above the law. Kern Spencer ripped off the mon­ey he and his acolyte col­lect­ed from the Cuban Light-Bulb project and years lat­er there is no res­o­lu­tion in that case which is lan­guish­ing in the bull-shit courts. Richard Azan does not even get charged despite clear­ly keep­ing the mon­ey he col­lect­ed. What the hell does it mat­ter if he made resti­tu­tion? The offence was already com­mit­ted, and in a in your face F***- you move the incom­pe­tent char­la­tan in Jamaica house stuck it to the coun­try by rein­stat­ing him to cab­i­net office. Jamaica has had some cor­rupt lead­ers, Portia is the worst.

INDECOM to harass cops doing their duties , risk­ing their lives for pen­nies. The Contractor General rec­om­mends crim­i­nal charges for Azan he gets a cab­i­net post instead.

The much hyped race for lead­er­ship of the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) has end­ed with a whop­ping del­e­gate major­i­ty of 692 votes for Andrew Holness . Holness retained his Party’s lead­er­ship over Audley Shaw the mem­ber of Parliament with port­fo­lio for Finance. Final vote tal­ly accord­ing to the Jamaican Papers was Holness 2’702 Shaw 2’012. Many in the Jamaica Labor Party as well as observers on the out­side felt the lead­er­ship race was a bad thing for the JLP. I dis­agreed, the idea of a chal­lenge to the select­ed leader of the JLP was not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing Laborites are used to. In fact it has been anti­thet­i­cal to the JLP and may actu­al­ly be part of the rea­son that par­ty only held office for 12 of the last 40 years.

Audley Shaw

As is to be expect­ed most of the mem­bers who sup­port­ed mis­ter Shaw’s can­di­da­cy for lead­er­ship of the par­ty have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions to mis­ter Holness. This is com­mon pro­to­col in cas­es such as these. The expla­na­tion is that, it gives the leader the oppor­tu­ni­ty to select a team he/​she has con­fi­dence in. This is how­ev­er a momen­tous occa­sion for Andrew Holness to ask mis­ter Shaw and those who sup­port­ed him who would like to stay on , to remain and help to rebuild and make the par­ty stronger. Magnanimity is a virtue he can ill-afford not to use. It is imper­a­tive that Mister Holness stand true to his words that he was unafraid of a chal­lenge. Real lead­ers are not per­turbed by chal­lenges, they are a tes­ta­ment to one’s own strength and sup­port structure.

Now that mis­ter Shaw and his acolytes have had their say it is incum­bent that if asked, they fall in line and sub­ject them­selves to the author­i­ty of the new­ly elect­ed Andrew Holness and the direc­tion in which he wants to take the coun­try. At the start of this exer­cise I qui­et­ly told a few friends that even though I am not opposed to Audley Shaw, I was hop­ing for a Holness win . I believe the del­e­gates have sent a strong mes­sage , which rein­forces that one does not have to dumb down to be a leader. One does not have to resort to so called (ray ray) [sic]to com­pete in Jamaican pol­i­tics. I believe that the labor par­ty’s del­e­gates have wittingly/​or unwit­ting­ly made the right deci­sion for their par­ty and for Jamaica. I asked one senior Jamaican how he felt about the race between the two men he rather quick­ly told me that Audley Shaw could­n’t even run the gas sta­tion he owned , how could any­one expect him to run a country.

He went on to tell me that Shaw ran a petrol sta­tion he owned into the ground.(no inde­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion to the verac­i­ty of this claim). I won­dered aloud to him whether this placed any real ques­tion mark against mis­ter Shaw’s abil­i­ty to lead the coun­try? My friend forth­right­ly asked me whether I believed Portia did not know this and would use it to clob­ber Shaw. The icing on the cake of that con­ver­sa­tion was when he asked me why did Bruce Golding bring Don Wedhy from the pri­vate sec­tor to under­study Shaw when he appoint­ed him min­is­ter of finance?

I believe both men and their dif­fer­ent camps need to now come togeth­er and for the good of the coun­try chart a path for­ward that the nation can grav­i­tate toward. It is an exis­ten­tial need that they do so and get it right for the good of the coun­try. PS I was not sur­prised that Delroy Chuck has inti­mat­ed to Andrew Holness that he does not wish to be con­sid­ered for any post in a new shad­ow cab­i­net. That should be rather good for Andrew Holness, Delroy Chuck should sim­ply go over to the PNP.