I Will Not Go Down That Road, Smith Tells Bunting

Minister Peter Bunting over remarks Bunting made at Sunday’s People’s National Party (PNP) Eastern St Andrew con­stituen­cy meet­ing. However, Smith, the Opposition spokesman on nation­al secu­ri­ty, said that he will con­tin­ue to raise the issue of a 22 per cent increase in mur­ders this year, over the fig­ures for the same peri­od last year, and also con­tin­ue to coöper­ate with the min­is­ter on behalf of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the fight against crime and vio­lence. “As we speak, 629 Jamaicans have lost their lives since the start of the year. This is ver­sus 515 for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year. Shocking!” the Opposition spokesman com­ment­ed, as he addressed a press con­fer­ence at the JLP’s Belmont Road head­quar­ters in Kingston. He said that of the 19 police divi­sions across the island, 13 have mur­der fig­ures so far this year which are above last year’s fig­ures, at a lev­el of between two per cent and 180 per cent increase.

Smith said that his job is to con­tin­ue work­ing for the Jamaican peo­ple and the JLP for a change in that situation.

“And, if this means sit­ting with Mr Bunting time and time again, or any oth­er min­is­ter in this PNP Administration, I will do just that,” he said. However, he crit­i­cised Bunting’s sug­ges­tion that he had raised the issue of the mur­der rate when he was off the island — a com­ment the min­is­ter made on Sunday. He said that the Opposition could not have known that Bunting was off the island until its mem­bers were so informed, hav­ing ques­tioned the absence of a state­ment from the min­is­ter on the mur­der issue at last week’s sit­ting of the House. “He did­n’t issue a state­ment that he was not around, so how were we to know that Bunting was not in Jamaica? What we knew was that the mur­ders were run­ning away in his absence, because dur­ing the peri­od that he was absent 45 per­sons were killed,” Smith said. He not­ed that the min­is­ter had also accused him of using the crime fig­ures for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, but said that this was not true, as his focus was always on crime and not politics.

“Mr Bunting went on to use a range of abu­sive lan­guage to describe the Opposition, but I am not going there. I need to focus on nation­al secu­ri­ty. I am not going down that road with Mr Bunting,” Smith insist­ed. Bunting admit­ted at Sunday’s polit­i­cal meet­ing that he had been off the island for some­time. However, nei­ther he nor his min­istry has giv­en any indi­ca­tion as to the rea­son for his absence. The Jamaica Observer con­tact­ed both the com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at his min­istry and his per­son­al assis­tant yes­ter­day in an effort to find out if the min­is­ter had been on vaca­tion, as was sug­gest­ed by Smith at yes­ter­day’s press brief­ing. However, while they both con­firmed that they were aware that he was off the island, they both said they were unaware of the rea­son for the trip dur­ing the two weeks. But, Gordon House con­firmed yes­ter­day evening that Bunting is to make a state­ment to the House of Representatives this after­noon. The state­ment is expect­ed to explain his absence from the island, and include his response to Smith’s charges on the soar­ing mur­der fig­ures. Read more here: I will not go down that road, Smith tells Bunting