It’s Time International Lending Agencies Tie The Granting Of Loans To Governments Decisive Action On Crime And Corruption.

A case of sim­ple rob­bery involv­ing a Clerk of the courts at the Spanish Town Court house in Saint Catherine has the Minister of Justice Mark Golding con­firm­ing that Permanent Secretary in the Justice Ministry, Carol Palmer, has been tasked to renew dis­cus­sions with the Police High Command to see what else can be done to improve security.
The Director of Public Prosecution has weighed in by call­ing for greater secu­ri­ty to be put in place to pro­tect pros­e­cu­tors and sup­port staff.
Not to be out­done the Permanent Secretary in the Justice Ministry Carol Palmer said every effort is being made to relo­cate a num­ber of cour­t­hous­es and the Spanish Town cour­t­house is high on the list. Palmer indi­cat­ed that the Ministry has already iden­ti­fied prop­er­ty in Central Village on the out­skirts of Spanish Town, St Catherine, for the relo­ca­tion of the Spanish Town Courthouse.

All of this hoopla came out of a sin­gle inci­dent in which a female Deputy DPP was in the process of remov­ing files from her car out­side the cour­t­house when a man approached her and demand­ed mon­ey. She com­plied and the man left. A case of sim­ple robbery !!!
No men­tion of a weapon of any kind, a rob­bery notwith­stand­ing because the vic­tim hand­ed over her prop­er­ty out of fear.
There is no evi­dence that the Clerk was tar­get­ed because she is a clerk, from all indi­ca­tions the rob­bery was sim­ply a ran­dom act because the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself to the perpetrator.
Jamaicans of all walks of life are exposed to these acts of vio­lence dai­ly. In the major­i­ty of the cas­es vic­tims are sub­ject­ed to egre­gious acts of vio­lence asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty upon their per­sons. Under no cir­cum­stances do we hear a response from the Justice Minister, his per­ma­nent sec­re­tary nor the Director of Public Prosecution weigh­ing in all at the same time.
This act of sim­ple rob­bery has evoked respons­es which includes actions as dras­tic as remov­ing the Courthouse from it’s present loca­tion to one deemed safer.
Even though those plans may have well been in the works mak­ing that argu­ment now in this instance shows us two things>
(1) That Justice is quite pre­pared to cow­er in fear and seek greater pro­tec­tion from those who would wreak may­hem on soci­ety , rather than take deci­sive actions to fix the nation’s crime prob­lem , using a heavy hand if necessary .
(2) That some lives mat­ter sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than others .

Thus far this year over 800 Jamaicans met their deaths at the hand of crim­i­nals. Additionally sev­er­al Police offi­cers have been killed both in the line of duty and off duty.

Constable Crystal Thomas was gunned down on a bus going home after fin­ish­ing her tour . No one heard from any of the pub­lic offi­cials men­tioned here.

Constable Curtis Lewis lost his leg and his life in a spot check , nei­ther the Justice Minister nor any oth­er mem­ber of the Government had any words of com­fort for Constable Lewis’ family .

Neither was there any words of assur­ance for the fam­i­ly of con­sta­ble Lyndon Barrett.
If our nation is to move for­ward this sense that some lives mat­ter more than oth­ers must come to an end .This sense of pan­ic sur­round­ing a case of sim­ple rob­bery involv­ing a pros­e­cu­tor as against the cal­lous mur­der of over 800 cit­i­zens involv­ing police offi­cers must also come to an end.

No life is more impor­tant that the oth­er. So the (“dut­ty foot man pon di cana is jus as impor­tant as di man from cher­ry garden”).
This dis­gust­ing prac­tise of valu­ing some lives while under­valu­ing oth­ers must end now. Certainly peo­ple who earn a liv­ing from tax­pay­ers dol­lars should not be allowed to pro­mul­gate that practise.
It’s time for the Government to take a stand against crim­i­nal­i­ty begin­ning with crim­i­nals with­in in it’s own ranks. There is a com­mon per­cep­tion that the rea­son crime has over­run the coun­try is direct­ly linked to the crim­i­nals with­in the Governing admin­is­tra­tion and indeed with­in the oppo­si­tion party.
On that basis maybe it’s time International lend­ing Agencies tie the grant­i­ng of loans to Governments like that in Jamaica to demon­stra­ble ded­i­ca­tion to elim­i­nat­ing crime and cor­rup­tion from with­in their ranks and nations as a whole.
No coöper­a­tion on the erad­i­ca­tion of crime and cor­rup­tion no loan. The sin­gle largest imped­i­ment to the devel­op­ment of Jamaica is it’s seri­ous crime prob­lem which is hav­ing a crip­pling effect on com­merce and sub­se­quent­ly the qual­i­ty of life in Jamaica.