Here Is Why The Bi-partisan Conference On Crime Is A Fraud…

If you believe that either of the two polit­i­cal par­ties is going to do any­thing about the seri­ous crime prob­lem in our coun­try you are wrong.
The fact is that despite a show of bi-par­ti­san kum­baya between the two par­ties, nei­ther of the two par­ties or their lead­er­ship, indi­vid­u­al­ly, or com­bined, will do a damn thing toward decon­struct­ing the lit­er­al and ide­o­log­i­cal gar­risons which have pit­ted Jamaicans against Jamaicans from as ear­ly as the ear­ly 1960s. 

THE PNP

As far as the People’s National Party is con­cerned the par­ty’s very exis­tence is con­tin­gent on the con­tin­u­a­tion of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions.
For read­ers who are not steeped in the nuances of the Jamaican cul­ture, zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions are referred to col­lo­qui­al­ly, and local­ly as [gar­risons].
The term [Garrison] is defined as; “a place where troops are sta­tioned in a fortress or town to defend it”.
In Jamaica’s case, they are polit­i­cal con­stituen­cies, held by one par­ty or the oth­er, not manned by offi­cial sol­diers of the state, but defend­ed by gun­men loy­al to the par­ty which holds that polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy.
Votes are deliv­ered en-bloc to the mem­ber of par­lia­ment, but are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive­ly of the wish­es of the peo­ple who live in those geo­graph­i­cal areas.
Fear of death is the gen­er­al rea­son peo­ple vote the way they do in those areas.
Over the decades’ polit­i­cal hand­outs and oth­er good­ies have solid­i­fied the polit­i­cal opin­ions in the zones of exclu­sions, mak­ing the views of those who live in them vir­tu­al­ly and tru­ly polit­i­cal­ly homogo­nous.
The PNP has more than twice the num­ber of gar­risons as the rul­ing JLP.
As such, the PNP is less like­ly to want to decon­struct a sys­tem that ben­e­fits the par­ty polit­i­cal­ly.
The con­tin­u­a­tion and expan­sion of the gar­risons in the nation’s pol­i­tics erode the very foun­da­tion of our demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Additionally, the PNP has always ben­e­fit­ted from the lack of edu­ca­tion or mise­d­u­ca­tion of the poor­est Jamaicans, many of whom live.….…in the zones of exclu­sion.
When peo­ple are not allowed to think for them­selves, they are told how to vote, in exchange for a few hand­outs, they can­not become who they were des­tined to be. Garrisons dimin­ish peo­ple, but those who con­trol the gar­risons are not about to give up the pow­er they have over those peo­ple who are enthralled by them with cult-like loyalty.

THE JLP

The JLP also has its share of gar­risons, the infa­mous Tivoli gar­dens is a JLP strong­hold. It has been char­ac­ter­ized as the moth­er of all gar­risons. It has been one of the Achilles heels of the Jamaica Labor Party, which began as the law and order par­ty.
Somewhere along the road, the JLP decid­ed that it had to match the PNP which had sold itself as the par­ty of the lit­tle man. That pop­ulist mantra did not match the his­to­ry of the PNP which began with elit­ists founders like Norman Manley the for­eign-edu­cat­ed Barrister.
The par­ty of Alexander Bustamante the blue-col­lar guy, found itself being described as the par­ty of the rich elites.
That label stuck to the JLP through­out the 70s, 80s, 90s and even to the present day.
The JLP as a polit­i­cal par­ty in the real­i­ty of today, is not immune to the temp­ta­tions of polit­i­cal pow­er. Like the PNP it has allowed itself to buck­le to temp­ta­tion and has fall­en vic­tim to cor­rup­tion.
Party lead­ers from Edward Seaga to Bruce Golding, did not do near­ly enough to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves from the worst actors with­in the crim­i­nal under­world.
Andrew Holness, the present Prime Minister, is a per­son­al ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a gar­ri­son con­stituen­cy. He arrived in Jamaica House a stu­dent of the old guard. That old guard must be def­er­en­tial to the forces with­in the com­mu­ni­ties which place politi­cians in pow­er. Those forces are nev­er aligned with the rule of law.
Additionally, Holness school­ing which fur­ther shapes his world view, was straight out of the left­ist University of the West Indies, not known for its sup­port for the rule of law either.
Andrew Holness, is a prod­uct of the old pol­i­tics, and though he would like to por­tray him­self as a new kind of leader, he is no dif­fer­ent than oth­ers before him who berat­ed and dis­re­spect­ed law enforce­ment and by exten­sion, the rule of law.
It isn’t that Andrew Holness wants a coun­try infest­ed with dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. I have nev­er spo­ken to him, but from his actions on oth­er fronts, it is clear that the Prime Minister wants to accom­plish great things for the Jamaican peo­ple. The ques­tions are not about the PM’s inten­tions, they are about his ideas on how to accom­plish his goals. 

Hyper-par­ti­sans are quick to dis­re­gard or seek to dis­cred­it any­one who seeks to shine a light on those they hold in high regard. That is okay with this writer. Understand that we all need heroes. It is impor­tant to appre­ci­ate that no one per­son has all of the answers and the Prime Minister like every­one else, should acquaint him­self with those real­i­ties.
It is not enough just to have oth­er peo­ple with ideas, it is impor­tant to find enough qual­i­fied peo­ple with diver­gent views on the same sub­ject.
Tragically for the rule of law and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of Jamaica, the coun­try is stuck in a bi-polar state of the black dog and the black mon­key.
Neither par­ty’s lead­er­ship has demon­strat­ed that they under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the present dilem­ma, much less the will­ing­ness to change them.

Absent that con­sen­sus, we end up as we are today, in a stale­mate in which both polit­i­cal Party’s lead­er­ship are jock­ey­ing for posi­tion in the race to the bot­tom. No polit­i­cal leader wants to make bold state­ments on crime.
Apart from their own per­son­al and finan­cial inter­ests in the cul­ture of crime, they dare not speak out,-out of fear of the media, the crim­i­nals in their con­stituen­cies, as well as the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups which have infest­ed our coun­try.
As a con­se­quence, the coun­try is immersed in a nev­er-end­ing cycle of vio­lence and death, because nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has the cajones to step on the serpent.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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