PORTIA & PNP ADMINISTRATION OUT OF IDEAS:

“Our mission of uplifting the Jamaican people and working toward economic independence was challenged during the past year by the slippage of the Jamaican dollar. The Net International Reserves also dipped, but not our reserve of courage, determination and resilience in the face of the international economic environment and domestic challenges. Yet, our confidence in the Jamaican people has never been stronger.

“Our ancestors did not fight so gallantly; did not shed their blood for us to now capitulate to gloom and doom. No. We know, as Jimmy Cliff assured us, that we can get it if we really want. All we have to do is to try, try and try, and we will succeed at last.”

PM Simpson Miller:

No those were not my words, they were uttered by Jamaica’s illus­tri­ous Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller pic­tured above. In fact those words were uttered by Miller but must have been writ­ten by a speech writer who clear­ly does­n’t yet under­stand the way each line and every word would be ana­lyzed and construed.

I’m not here to cri­tique the Prime Minister’s speech , I am sim­ply here to draw atten­tion to the fact that Jamaica is in dire straits, and to shine a light to those wish­ing to see that the Country’s lead­ers have no clue.

She did not have the hon­esty or the grav­i­tas to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for the destruc­tion of the Dollar.

It’s inter­est­ing that the Prime Minister has noth­ing she could point to as progress made since they won the elec­tions on December 29^th 2011. In fact after the PNP took office they had not tabled much less passed a sin­gle piece of leg­is­la­tion with­in the first 100 days of attain­ing office.

This is tes­ta­ment to what I con­clud­ed then that this par­ty was tired, out of ideas, and had no clue that the peo­ple would thrust them back into gov­er­nance after such a short respite. Remember that pri­or to the his­to­ry mak­ing JLP sin­gle term, the PNP had been in office for an unbro­ken ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years, dur­ing which time every­thing we knew and loved about Jamaica had changed for the worse.

It comes as no sur­prise then that the Prime Minister would char­ac­ter­ize the seri­ous eco­nom­ic cri­sis fac­ing the coun­try as , Quote”

Our mission of uplifting the Jamaican people and working toward economic independence was challenged during the past year by the slippage of the Jamaican dollar. The Net International Reserves also dipped”

This state­ment has to be the under­state­ment of the decade, it goes to the heart of why Jamaica’s pre­cip­i­tous posi­tion will not change under this admin­is­tra­tion. As I have said before you can­not fix some­thing you do not understand!

So while the Prime Minister down­plays the seri­ous­ness of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion crime con­tin­ues to esca­late, less Jamaicans are return­ing to the land of their birth to vis­it , much less to reset­tle. Even Police Officers are being slaugh­tered and the Police Department long laid bare by nepo­tism , pol­i­tics and cor­rup­tion, is reduced to utter­ing threats to crim­i­nals. The irony is that crim­i­nals do not make idle threats, they actu­al­ly car­ry out their inten­tions with cold effi­cien­cy, irre­spec­tive of the vic­tim, police of otherwise.

Over the last few days a Detective Sargent was slaugh­tered as he arrived home, a few weeks ago a retired Deputy Superintendent Denzil Boyd was slaugh­tered , you guessed it.… as he arrived home. Before that Retired Superintendent Anthony Hewitt was mur­dered in broad day­light, also to lose his life was Senior Superintendent Dathan Henry, a friend of mine, word on the street is that he was mur­dered, poi­son being the method used.

To date nei­ther of these mur­ders have been solved, the Jamaica Constabulary Force zero of 4. The year was 1991, after serv­ing 10 years in the JCF I decid­ed to call it a day, I was 30 years old , I fig­ured I would not stay and be an old bit­ter cor­rupt cop. I had suc­cess­ful­ly sat and passed the Acting Corporal exam the first time around at 2 years ser­vice. Not promoted !

Hewitt:

At 4 years ser­vice I was allowed to sit the Corporal exam, aced it . Not promoted.

Sent on CIB course. Aced it, high­est score in the writ­ten exams, sec­ond high­est score in weapons and tac­ti­cal shoot­ing, wrote and dev­iled the Valedictory address, wrote the vote of thanks for the woman cop who deliv­ered it.

Then came the accel­er­at­ed exam pro­gram, I was one of sev­en­ty-five who passed, of the 400 plus who qual­i­fied to sit the exams, did the inter­view, the Superintendent did not rec­om­mend me because he could­n’t push me around. This despite 13 com­men­da­tions on my record in less than a decade of ser­vice and no instance of impro­pri­ety of any kind. Not to men­tion acco­lades from high­ly placed mem­bers of the soci­ety who crossed path with me and want­ed the Commissioner to know. I still have a at least one hang­ing on my home office wall from the for­mer chair­man of the Police Services Commssion Noël Hylton.

It was­n’t until after I had bought a tick­et and decid­ed that I was leav­ing the Force and the Country that I was sum­moned to 103 Old Hope Road to meet with Deputy Commissioner Harper to dis­cuss my future, much to my dis­may. No one ever thought that it was nec­es­sary to pro­mote a hard-work­ing cop who had name recog­ni­tion, clean record, and cred­i­bil­i­ty with the peo­ple he served. It was only after I was ready to walk out the door they were ready to promise me pro­mo­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead some new squad or anoth­er that was more intel­li­gence based, that would focus on ille­gal trad­ing in for­eign cur­ren­cy on the coun­try’s west coast.

Boyd:

I polite­ly declined, true to his word, DCP Harper saw that I was pro­mot­ed the same week. I learned of that pro­mo­tion from New York. There was no men­tion of my qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the accel­er­at­ed pro­gram, which super­seded most of what they had, many of whom were lack­eys, boot-lick­ers, yes-men , who could not catch a crim­i­nal if he was in their bed. You know the type, the force is full of them now as senior officers.

My sto­ry is the sto­ry of a lot of tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed men and women who sim­ply walked away, after all the JCF of today is what’s left, it’s not much, they can­not inves­ti­gate, they are still mired in cliques, friends, pol­i­tics, ass-kissers, boot-lick­ers , and yard boys, I refused to be any of those.

I am not in any way impugn­ing the char­ac­ter of all mem­bers of the Force, those who are labeled ‚pret­ty well know them­selves, they did­n’t have any use for me when I served , they were scared, because I did­n’t take or put up with any s***.

Simpson:

The killers of these men are, actu­al­ly still walk­ing around with­out any fear of appre­hen­sion, they know the Police Force is inept, cor­rupt, and inca­pable of ful­fill­ing their emp­ty promise to bring them to jus­tice, or to bring jus­tice to them, my pref­er­ence in cas­es like these. In oth­er local­i­ties Killers of law enforce­ment offi­cers are treat­ed with the utmost dis­patch and alacrity, they will not rest until cop-killers are caught or killed, in Jamaica it’s busi­ness as usu­al. Law enforce­ment is ren­dered impo­tent, by pol­i­tics and crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups like Jamaicans for Justice, which open­ly sup­ports and lends com­fort to mass killers and cop killers.

In 1991 the JCF was clear­ing up about 70% of the crimes report­ed to it, today that num­ber is down to 7 % , and the con­vic­tion rate is around 1 – 3% . For those who won­der why there are so many killings, look no fur­ther than with­in these num­bers. Criminals com­mit crimes when the chance of get­ting caught is low. In Jamaica it’s next to zero.

If you ever thought pol­i­tics do not seri­ous­ly impact your life ‚take a look at Jamaica and see what a peo­ple’s addic­tive infat­u­a­tion with promis­es , giveaways,cheap pop­ulism, a faux nation­al­ism does to a country.