Is Jamaica Too Far Gone?

The Jamaican people continue to be deceived by the very people they put in place to look out for their interest.
Someone said to me this morning that Jamaica may be too far gone. I could not concur or disagree as that is above my pay-grade. One thing is certain, it will be extremely difficult to turn around our country because of it’s lack of checks and balances ‚and a people who have for over fifty years being encouraged to break the laws by their own Government’s lethargy.

Governments are put in place to take care of the affairs of nations since the begin­ning of record­ed his­to­ry. The pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of nation’s lead­er­ship has been the secu­ri­ty of their people.
As time pro­gressed Governments evolved into tak­ing care of more of their cit­i­zens’ needs , though not at the expense of nation­al security.
The United States the World’s sec­ond largest democ­ra­cy (by pop­u­la­tion) des­ig­nates a large part of it’s annu­al bud­get to it’s National secu­ri­ty . That is a clear under­stand­ing of what Government’s main role is.

Government has a right to lead, not through decree or pro­nounce­ments, but through leg­is­la­tion on which con­sen­sus has been arrived at.
When Government lead through that process and fol­low the laws like every­one else , the cit­i­zen­ry fol­low . It is through those process­es that the Governed acqui­esces to the dic­tates of those who Govern.

If there is a per­cep­tion that music being pro­duced in prison is hav­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences on the nation’s youth, the Government should be lead­ing the charge to ensure that-that does not happen.
Government fur­ther has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure that there is noth­ing unto­ward hap­pen­ing in any of it’s arms which are against the greater good.

Even if record­ing is allowed as part of the reha­bil­i­ta­tive process of inmates there must be stan­dards which pre­cludes con­vict­ed felons (least of all mur­der­ers) from doing fur­ther harm to soci­ety through that sup­posed reha­bil­i­ta­tive process.
That’s com­mon sense lead­er­ship if a coun­try believes in the rule of law.
It goes with­out say­ing that the Government would be attuned to ensur­ing that the inter­est of hun­dreds of thou­sands of inno­cent young minds take prece­dent over the rights of con­vict­ed murderers.

NOT SO IN JAMAICA

According to the Jamaica Observer ‚state min­is­ter for nation­al secu­ri­ty, Senator Pearnel Charles Jnr, says he has asked a legal team and the Commissioner of Corrections Ina Hunter to pro­vide a clear under­stand­ing of the inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the pro­duc­tion of music in max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prisons.

Charles, in the mean­time, said he is not in agree­ment with the recent sug­ges­tion by Hanna of the whole­sale ban­ning of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of mur­der con­victs. “It’s a very sim­plis­tic view to say you’re con­vict­ed, and you’re mak­ing this impact, so we are going to sen­sor your music. Remember, some­times you may be the cre­ator of the music and may have sold the rights to your music. That is why we have to have a clear and cogent dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al issues: ban­ning somebody’s music because they are con­vict­ed, and ban­ning music that aris­es from unau­tho­rized record­ings (which) wouldn’t be ban­ning. That music is just ille­gal,” he said.

If there is a case where a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal sold his music to some­one else then the thing to do is to plug that gap with legislation.
Stop it from hap­pen­ing. It’s not too dif­fi­cult to pass a law which ensures that no con­vict­ed crim­i­nal may ben­e­fit from the pro­ceeds of any­thing he/​she does whilst incarcerated.

There has been much sup­port for this in Jamaica if social media respons­es on the issue can be used as a barometer.
But even more impor­tant­ly , the Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty and a duty to pull the plug from any such record­ing as soon as there are alle­ga­tions that it is doing dam­age to society.

But this goes even fur­ther than sim­ply pulling the plug on the music of con­vict­ed felons. There should have been no mur­der misog­y­nist music being played on pub­lic air­waves in the first place.
What Pearnel Charles Jr’s, has shown by his state­ment, is that he is more con­cerned about pro­tect­ing the rights of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers to per­pet­u­ate and pro­mul­gate misog­y­nist, mur­der mad­ness, than to pro­tect the nations impres­sion­able children.

How will there ever be a turn-around of the chaos and law­less­ness in this coun­try when those elect­ed to lead have stri­dent­ly abdi­cat­ed their respon­si­bil­i­ty to do so?
Why would a junior Minister be ask­ing down to legal teams and the com­mis­sion­er of cor­rec­tions what the pro­to­cols are?
Disallow the damn prac­tice , period!

“We have to have a clear and cogent dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al issues: ban­ning somebody’s music because they are con­vict­ed, and ban­ning music that aris­es from unau­tho­rized record­ings (which) wouldn’t be ban­ning. That music is just ille­gal”. Said Charles a junior min­is­ter in the jus­tice min­istry and a lawyer.

You can­not make this up. This is the kind of lead­er­ship hap­pen­ing in our country.
Jamaica aver­ages over 100 mur­ders each month, many peo­ple won­der how it is that a coun­try which sells itself as a place where every­thing is all right, has been any­thing but.
Well there you have it , you deter­mine whether this is lead­er­ship or is it pan­der­ing of the worst order to the worst ele­ments in our country?
The thing which both­ers me is that he did it while pre­tend­ing that he wants to fol­low the law.