Lets Not Be PNP/​JLP, We Are Jamaicans:

Our pol­i­tics , like Race and Religion help to shape who we are, how we view the world, how we relate to each oth­er. There is no one way which is right , no one way which is absolute. As such when I take the lib­er­ty to be a social com­men­ta­tor, I am very mind­ful that I am lim­it­ed in what I know, as such I am par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful in under­stand­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the views of oth­ers. I am not offend­ed by oppos­ing views I look to learn from those who dis­agree with me, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that I have nev­er walked in their shoes. Though we are shaped by our expe­ri­ences, we are not pre­clud­ed from un-shack­ling our­selves from the mores of tra­di­tion­al or parochial thought. Essentially we have the abil­i­ty to learn some­thing new always. I too have been guilty of being a par­ty to the con­fin­ing ten­ta­cles of Jamaican polit­i­cal label­ing, I have sought over time to extri­cate myself from those men­tal chains which has since allowed me to be a Jamaican, and not a PNP or a JLP, I am Jamaican. People asked me what “P” was I dur­ing the heights of polit­i­cal fer­vor years ago, I respond­ed ‚“Police” ! To this day I could­n’t care less about either polit­i­cal par­ty, I refused to allow myself to be defined by those labels. Today as we look back at what hap­pened in Tivoli Gardens, we must look back to ensur­ing that what Tivoli Gardens metas­ta­sized into, is nev­er again allowed to hap­pen. I have writ­ten at length about this, no com­mu­ni­ty should ever be off-lim­its to law enforce­ment. No Politician should ask “what was Adams doing in Tivoli”? As Edward Seaga did. The infer­ence being that law-enforce­ment is pre­clud­ed from enter­ing his per­son­al enclave. The oth­er par­ty is no bet­ter they argue Jamaica is PNP country.

Really?

Jamaica is not PNP coun­try, but they have used tax­pay­ers mon­ey to cre­ate these zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions, which allows them to have the temer­i­ty to say so pub­licly. In fact they have eleven times the Garrisons the JLP does. They have bragged that they are guar­an­teed to keep win­ning as a result of this type of ger­ry­man­der­ing. As rep­re­hen­si­ble as this prac­tice is both polit­i­cal par­ties in the United States indulge in this un-demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tice when they con­trol the major­i­ty, absolute pow­er cor­rupts absolute­ly. The University of the West Indies have been a huge con­trib­u­tor to this kind of men­tal­i­ty, for decades it has prop­a­gat­ed and pro­mul­gat­ed a far left ide­ol­o­gy not just through its Curriculum but the Professors it hired. The Communist par­ty owed it’s gen­e­sis to that Institution. Years ago as a young offi­cer assigned to the Ranger Squad out of the Mobile Reserve, I infa­mous­ly Graced the cov­er of the then (WP[J)Communist Party Newspaper the “Struggle”, brand­ed a ter­ror­ist cop. My crime was that I stood my ground, did my job. We were sent to make sure that a band of WPJ demon­stra­tors did not get to invade the grounds of Jamaica House the Offices of the Prime Minister who was in office at the time. Edward Seaga was the then Prime Minister, what irony. Years lat­er I went to a Restaurant on Dunrobin Avenue to have lunch, with me was Detective Sargent Gerald Wallace, the lady who owned the estab­lish­ment was very cor­dial , she knew mis­ter Wallace who did the intro­duc­tions. I was sur­prised that she knew my fam­i­ly, as well as to learn she was friends with my dad while they were in school. She went on to tell me about her father, famed Lawyer Huntley Monroe and her broth­er Trevor Monroe, President of the WPJ. The sto­ry had come full cir­cle, I told her of the inci­dent in which I was labeled a Terrorist cop, she was livid and shocked, she promised me she would fix it. Sometime lat­er she called to tell me that she had gone ahead and arranged a meet­ing between her broth­er Dr, Trevor Monroe and myself,we were to meet for lunch at her place, I agreed. As usu­al it was Seargant Wallace and I. That day we had lunch with Dr. Monroe and her, he was very engag­ing, we had a very good con­ver­sa­tion cul­mi­nat­ing in him giv­ing me a full-throat-ed apol­o­gy for the “Struggle’s” head­line, we made up and went our seaper­ate ways.

… Oh by the way we paid for our lunch.

I under­stood the Paper’s need for sen­sa­tion­al­ism, after all they need­ed trac­tion and who bet­ter to give them trac­tion than the evil police[sic]. They nev­er both­ered to think of what could have hap­pened if we had allowed peo­ple to invade the Prime Minister’s office and do him harm( irre­spec­tive of who is in that office). The sto­ry of that day his­tor­i­cal­ly would have been much dif­fer­ent going into pos­ter­i­ty. The beau­ty of our meet­ing was that peo­ple with dia­met­ri­cal­ly dif­fer­ent objec­tives were able to sit, break bread and dis­cuss those objectives,it was won­der­ful and enlightening.

Thanks to Mrs White, a won­der­ful woman.