Smart Move Dudus:

Christopher (dudus) Coke has fig­ured out what his legions of fans and patrons still haven’t, and may nev­er fig­ure out . That is, our lit­tle pond, Jamaica land we love, is just that , a lit­tle pond, we are all lit­tle fish in a great big Ocean, answer­able to one pow­er, wel­come to glob­al­iza­tion and a new world order.

He cor­rect­ly adopt­ed the most sane and plau­si­ble course of action opened to him under the cir­cum­stances, tak­ing a plea. After all, there are those who argued that he is a smart man, not sure about pre­vi­ous actions on his part , but this guilty plea tend to indi­cate that he is not stu­pid. There have been a lot of talk about Lawyers and what they are able to do , the argu­ments they are able to make and what must hap­pen as a result of what high­ly paid lawyers can get done. I get that , with­out mon­ey if one is caught up in the sys­tem you are as good as dead. Even with mon­ey in the United States, one is guar­an­teed grand­stand­ing lawyers mak­ing loud argu­ments in the court of pub­lic opin­ion for pub­lic con­sump­tion and not much more. Those pro­nounce­ments are loud­er depend­ing on the finan­cial worth of the client, those grand com­ments are geared toward fleec­ing their high-pro­file clients of all the cash they can . America’s Justice sys­tem is one of laws , no one cares about your stand­ing in soci­ety, if any­thing that may actu­al­ly work against one who has promi­nence. Grandstanding lawyers know bet­ter than enter court rooms with arro­gance , and self-impor­tance. I recall Mark Myrie’s (buju) case and one News paper crow­ing about Myrie’s lawyer cry­ing about the fact that Myries was con­vict­ed. As I com­ment­ed then, that was great the­atre and noth­ing more on the part of Buju’s lawyer.

This leads us to the real rea­son I am writ­ing this blog.

Christopher(dudus) Coke

It is a seri­ous indict­ment and a damn shame that the America many love to hate, is the coun­try that is always clean­ing up Jamaica’s mess. Christopher Coke came to promi­nence dur­ing the 1990’s after the arrest and sub­se­quent death of his father Lester Lloyd Coke. Matter will occu­py any space left unfilled, the Universe does not like a vac­u­um. Coke sim­ply filled a vac­u­um, left by incom­pe­tence, cor­rup­tion, pol­i­tics, and impo­tence. Christopher Coke , his father, and oth­ers before them, were allowed to oper­ate and flour­ish in the vac­u­um left in Jamaica by impo­tent Law Enforcement and cor­rupt dirty crim­i­nal Politicians. despite their mete­oric ascen­den­cy in the lit­tle pond, they were brought down by glob­al­iza­tion, mak­ing them vic­tims of the sys­tem as all oth­er Jamaicans have been.

I would imag­ine there are quite a few peo­ple who are a lit­tle wor­ried at these new devel­op­ments , the truth is, a brave yet fed-up police offi­cer is now a true Jamaican hero, we must acknowl­edge Dr. Peter Phillips for sign­ing the mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing with the Americans a move that made all of this pos­si­ble. Phillips took it onto him­self to do this , a move that has earned him the ven­om of par­ti­sans and crim­i­nals in Jamaica, (not sure if there is a dif­fer­ence between the two) .

Phillips did not trust to inform the Prime Minister under whom he served of his inten­tion to sign the MOU’S , this my fel­low Jamaicans, is rather telling ‚and should be explored. What is the rea­son behind Peter Phillips’ deci­sion not to inform the cab­i­net of which he was a part , or then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Whatever the rea­son for Phillips’ decision,we must accept that Jamaica was well served by the actions of the Police Officer and Phillips whether or not we agree with the path they chose to take to get the result they accom­plished. I am sick­ened that after Lester Lloyd Coke was arrest­ed Tivoli gar­dens was allowed to con­tin­ue to devel­op into a state with­in a state.

The Police depart­ment have done no inves­ti­ga­tions into what was com­mon knowl­edge of gun-run­ning ‚drug deal­ing, extor­tion , mur­der for hire, weapons for hire, and a pletho­ra of oth­er seri­ous crim­i­nal and ter­ror­is­tic activ­i­ties in that enclave. These vices are not con­fined to Tivoli Gardens , but as one past Police Commissioner labelled that com­mu­ni­ty quote “the moth­er of all gar­risons” Tivoli took the cake in terms of exclu­sion. When we speak of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sion the for­mer read­out of the Cokes, was the stan­dard by which oth­er gar­risons were judged. There were, and still are crimes and acts of ter­ror with­in oth­er gar­risons, but in terms of the order of how things gets done Tivoli gar­dens was the template.

Many Jamaicans are still strug­gling to com­pre­hend how so many peo­ple could have come out and demon­strat­ed their undy­ing loy­al­ty to Dudus Coke, they fail to grasp the order of how things was in Tivoli Gardens. Those com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers were nev­er answer­able to the Jamaican state, they lived accord­ing to the order of a long line of com­mu­ni­ty thugs,culminating in Dudus Coke. This com­mu­ni­ty, built by Labor was the brain-child of Edward Phillip George Seaga, who ran that con­stituen­cy as his pri­vate fief­dom, with the enforcers admin­is­ter­ing day-to-day run­ning of the con­stituen­cy . All of the activ­i­ties of Tivoli has been divorced from the activ­i­ties of the Jamaican state, until it’s annex­a­tion last May.

On these posts we dai­ly ask Jamaicans to think for them­selves and look at the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple they are elect­ing to lead them, as those deci­sions have seri­ous con­se­quences for them and their chil­dren for gen­er­a­tions to come. We sug­gest that the peo­ple demand con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, reform that will tar­get them for human and civ­il rights , safe­ty and secu­ri­ty and the abil­i­ty for them to be guar­an­teed their God-giv­en right to be all they can be in a soci­ety free from crime and terror.

I post for you com­ments from a few Jamaicans after learn­ing of Coke’s guilty plea.

Shortly after learn­ing that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke was ready to plead guilty in a United States court, for­mer National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips char­ac­terised it as a vic­to­ry for Jamaica against transat­lantic crim­i­nal­i­ty. This rep­re­sents a suc­cess­ful out­come in the spe­cif­ic plea arrange­ments and, in gen­er­al, will serve to assist Jamaica in chart­ing the way for­ward … . We now have to await the out­come of the plea arrangements.”

Thank you Peter Phillips , I do not agree with your pol­i­tics, how­ev­er on the course of actions you took regard­ing the MOU’s , I com­mend you for doing some­thing about this dis­grace­ful betray­al to our nation­al sur­vival, and our way of life.

For Jamaica Labour Party Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, who as an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ed Coke dur­ing the extra­di­tion hear­ing at Up Park Camp, St Andrew, in June last year, the deci­sion to cop a plea is like­ly to be the cor­rect one.I knew of the devel­op­ments and was aware that they were final­is­ing some arrange­ments … after some stren­u­ous con­sul­ta­tions. The lawyers on the team who have an under­stand­ing of the sys­tem as well as the clien­t’s (Coke) men­tal state would be in a posi­tion to make a sen­si­ble decision

Really Tom? this new posi­tion does not jive with your for­mer rhetoric , but you are a lawyer and politi­co I under­stand how you could have changed your narrative.

Peter Bunting, who now han­dles the secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio for the Opposition, said the lat­est devel­op­ments were hard­ly sur­pris­ing. “Once Mr Coke’s request to reject wire­tap­ping evi­dence into evi­dence was turned down by the court, there would have been lit­tle chance of him get­ting away as the evi­dence, cou­pled with that of the wit­ness coöper­a­tion, has been so strong.” this lat­est devel­op­ment should have impli­ca­tions for oth­ers in Coke’s crim­i­nal organisation.

Veteran politi­cian K.D. Knight, the attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed the People’s National Party at the Manatt-Dudus com­mis­sion of enquiry, said it was clear that Coke had tak­en this course after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and deter­min­ing that this would get him the low­est pos­si­ble sentence. 

These two com­ments are the two that nau­se­at­ed me, what damn Cowards !

Both of these clowns have had oppor­tu­ni­ties over the last ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years to do some­thing about crime and ter­ror in Jamaica . They have stood by and watched this crim­i­nal empire devel­op in Tivoli Gardens a labor gar­ri­son ‚and in many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties gen­tri­fied with pnp sup­port­ers. At every turn these two and their entire par­ty has vot­ed down the rule of law, unable to sup­port the police, or allow­ing the depart­ment to change to one that is com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sion­al in the per­for­mance of its duties. they have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sided with crim­i­nal rights groups against Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, repeat­ing the same tor­tured repug­nant lie that giv­ing police more pow­er to do their jobs will lead to police abuse.

My posi­tion is this, even if the afore­men­tioned was true, I would still sup­port moves to empow­er police over crim­i­nals , then deal with any trans­gres­sions on their part as they arise.  Jamaica’s police depart­ment is prob­a­bly the most scru­ti­nized police depart­ment in the world. The par­ty of Bunting and show-boat­ing Knight, has nev­er seen a crim­i­nal they did not like.

The bot­tom line is that we Jamaicans will have a hard time inte­grat­ing into the promis­es of this new cen­tu­ry, we will also have a hard­er than nec­es­sary time nav­i­gat­ing the quick-sands of this new fron­tier . We con­tin­ue to hold onto failed strate­gies and social norms of the past, that have failed over and over again. We con­tin­ue to look to our colo­nial past for guid­ance , lead­er­ship, and sal­va­tion, not under­stand­ing that the future is in edu­ca­tion, infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, and man­u­fac­tur­ing to help solve the prob­lems that will be part of the land­scape going for­ward. Our peo­ple are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of dance-hall disc-jock­eys , ath­letes, and peo­ple with Phd’s, ignor­ing at their own per­il the lit­tle farmer that toils to pro­duce life sus­tain­ing food, We dis­re­spect the guy that col­lects the garbage, but rev­er­ences politi­cians that are them­selves no more than garbage by their own actions.

Let this be a les­son to all who aspire to don-ship, let all who encour­age oth­ers to com­mit crimes in order that they may hold onto state pow­er, as I have stat­ed before , the rules are chang­ing , the world is get­ting small­er , crim­i­nal­i­ty will no longer stand.

mike beck­les:

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