Prime Minister’s Presentation A Breath Of Fresh Air…

Like a long cool glass of ice cold water after being parched in the searing mid-day sun, Andrew Holness delivered his presentation of his new budget with brilliant clarity and wit. It felt like a veil of cloud was lifted , all of a sudden the brilliant rays of the sun exploded, bathing the scene with warm brilliance.
For the first time in four years the Jamaican people were not asked to tighten their belts , prepare for more austerity or to give more from the nothing that they have.
Andrew Michael Holness presented a budget to the Island’s 2.8 million Jamaicans living on the Island which ought to give hope to even the most hyper partisan observer .
Beyond that however his budget opened the way for Jamaicans living in the diaspora to dream once again of retiring in their beloved homeland.

For the first time in years the Jamaican peo­ple were pre­sent­ed with a bud­get which though still shack­led to International Monetary Fund (IMF) dic­tates, offered a clear path out of the clutch­es of con­sis­tent aus­ter­i­ty where meet­ing (IMF) tar­gets was the des­ti­na­tion not a road.
The Prime Minister out­lined new ini­tia­tives to make home own­er­ship a pri­or­i­ty for all Jamaicans, this was a goal of for­mer Prime Minister Michael Manley, Holness acknowl­edged that unde­ni­able fact.

HOUSING
Most of the crit­i­cal issues stand­ing in the way of the Nation’s devel­op­ment were addressed in the Prime Minister’s pre­sen­ta­tion. He allud­ed to the fact that peo­ple look­ing for jobs and those who found jobs in the tourism sec­tor pre­sent­ed a crit­i­cal prob­lem of hous­ing short­age around the tourism towns which result­ed in peo­ple cap­tur­ing lands and build­ing on those lands.
The Prime Minister out­lined that it will be dif­fi­cult to reg­u­lar­ize those prob­lems but promised his admin­is­tra­tion was com­mit­ted to doing so , while out­lin­ing bold new ini­tia­tives to han­dle future hous­ing needs which is expect­ed from a poten­tial eco­nom­ic boom.

The NHT will devel­op approx­i­mate­ly 2,000 ser­viced lots which will be deliv­ered over the next two years. The final sell­ing price of these lots will range from $1.8 mil­lion to $2.4 mil­lion, and will be sit­u­at­ed in the parish­es of Westmoreland, Trelawny, St Ann, Clarendon and St Catherine. These lots will be sold to indi­vid­u­als earn­ing below $12,000 weekly.“Large pri­vate devel­op­ers such as Gore, WIHCON, Select Homes and oth­ers have already com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing about 4,000 homes on our North Coast, which will reduce squat­ting, dri­ve con­struc­tion, pro­vide jobs and healthy com­mu­ni­ty, and bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to more Jamaicans,” said Holness.

This par­tic­u­lar area of the Prime Minister’s pre­sen­ta­tion con­firms to me that he fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand what it takes to grow an econ­o­my. His words con­vey , at least to this low­ly blog­ger that the coun­try has at it’s head a Chief Executive Officer who under­stand the val­ue of home own­er­ship to a fam­i­ly, not just finan­cial­ly but on their psy­che as well.
For most peo­ple, own­ing a home is the sin­gle largest invest­ment they will make in their life­time. Home own­er­ship means every­one has a stake.
But most impor­tant­ly for the short term, home build­ing and home sale means that every­thing else sells . That kind of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty cre­ates more oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ment and the cycle continues.
When home sales are boom­ing every­thing else see an uptick in sales activ­i­ty, nails and oth­er build­ing mate­r­i­al , elec­tri­cal mate­r­i­al, plumb­ing mate­r­i­al, fur­ni­ture , house­wares it’s a bee-hive of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty . This admin­is­tra­tion has shown that it has lis­tened to the peo­ple and is respond­ing to the peo­ple accord­ing­ly, this bodes well for Jamaica.

SECURITY

Most who both­er to take the time to read what I have to say may accuse me of being hung-up or obsessed with the issue of crime in Jamaica.
I can­not become immune or dis­in­ter­est­ed in the effect crime is hav­ing on our people.
As a police offi­cer over two and a half decades ago I real­ized real quick that there were some real­ly , real­ly won­der­ful peo­ple who made up our country.
As a police offi­cer one can get real­ly hard hav­ing to deal with some of the least well adjust­ed mem­bers of soci­ety. The job offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty how­ev­er to see the soul of the peo­ple, I saw that soul.
I was com­mit­ted to doing what I could to help peo­ple as an offi­cer and after leav­ing I stayed com­mit­ted because of the love I have for coun­try and the good Jamaican peo­ple I came to know over the years.

I con­tin­ue to harp on the con­stant shed­ding of blood , the abuse of the nation’s chil­dren, the abuse of our beau­ti­ful women , and the incred­i­bly high propen­si­ty we have for lethal vio­lence at the drop of a hat.
We can­not real­ize our true poten­tial if we con­tin­ue to seri­ous­ly abuse the least and most vul­ner­a­ble among us.
Prime Minister Holness spoke to this issue.
“Once there is a report to a police sta­tion of an inci­dent of domes­tic vio­lence, the domes­tic vio­lence coör­di­na­tor will be alert­ed in par­al­lel with the for­mal inves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure. He or she will vis­it with those alleged­ly involved and this vis­it will be fol­lowed up by vis­its from mem­bers of the con­sul­ta­tive com­mit­tee engag­ing those involved in a process of dia­logue and reconciliation.”

Most impor­tant­ly I thought was a recog­ni­tion on the part of the admin­is­tra­tion that some­thing is rad­i­cal­ly wrong with grant­i­ng bail to murderers .
This has been one of the sore spots which has con­tributed to the mur­der rate significantly .
Having done much research on how oth­er juris­dic­tions across the world approach the issue of bail I found that Jamaica is way out on a limb on it’s own . Simply put Jamaican judges are either stu­pid­ly insen­si­tive to mur­der vic­tims or they are on the take.
Even in coun­tries like Britain which is very lib­er­al on bail , mur­der­ers sim­ply do not walk out on bail before their tri­al. Needless to say that in the United States you are not get­ting bail, or bail is set at such a high bond that accused mur­der­ers can­not afford the bond.
We ful­ly under­stand the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence but we must bal­ance that with the rule of law and the right the mur­dered par­ty had to life.
Jamaican Judges have disin­gen­u­ous­ly argued that accord­ing to the bail act , the law should not be used as punishment.

Nevertheless Jamaican judges are quite com­fort­able with lock­ing away peo­ple they do not like .
The Bail Act is extreme­ly clear that there are con­di­tions which must be con­sid­ered when the ques­tion of bail comes up. This part is con­ve­nient­ly left out of their twist­ed nar­ra­tive when they talk about how tied their hands are by the bail act.

(1) The nature of the crime !
There is no ambi­gu­i­ty here, mur­der is the zenith when it comes to the lev­el of crime one can be involved with, so much so mur­der is not a statute , it is against com­mon law.
This means mur­der is against the con­science of human­i­ty in what­ev­er coun­try what­ev­er cul­ture, it does not require leg­is­la­tion, it is sim­ply wrong.
Hence there is no statute of lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der. A hun­dred years after com­mit­ting mur­der and you are caught you are to be punished.

(2) The like­li­hood that the offend­er will not show up for trial..
Hum , how many mur­der­ers have they grant­ed bail and nev­er see them ever again?

(3) The like­li­hood that the accused will inter­fere with witness/​es .…
How many poten­tial wit­ness­es more must be killed before the idi­ot­ic judges apply the laws and not their per­son­al lib­er­al agen­da on the courts?
For years they have had a free hand they are part of the problem.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​7​5​594 – 2/

In Jamaica mur­der­ers are sum­mar­i­ly let out on bail where they sim­ply kill wit­ness­es against them. When they do the case is over. Why would we expect mur­der to trend down when we are incen­tiviz­ing killers?
In one case one par­tic­u­lar mur­der­er was charged with five sep­a­rate mur­ders on five sep­a­rate occa­sions and was let out each time he was arrest­ed even before he answered to the first charge. He sim­ply got on a flight and fled the juris­dic­tion eventually.
Victims be damned.
Prime Minister Holenss spoke to this as well argu­ing that his admin­is­tra­tion will be push­ing to amend the bail act to pre­vent cer­tain mur­der­ers from receiv­ing bail even as he asked for bi-par­ti­san­ship in the fight against crime while mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion par­ty sat stone faced.
I have been argu­ing for this as well , but I also believe that more should be done. Simply keep­ing mur­der­ers in jail is not enough .
We need new leg­is­la­tion which would allow a case to pro­ceed against a mur­der accused whether the wit­ness dies or not and put in place spe­cial puni­tive com­po­nents if it is proven that an accused has any­thing to do with the death of a poten­tial wit­ness, eg auto­mat­ic death penalty.

Holness also touched on INDECOM he point­ed to the poten­tial the Act is hav­ing on the abil­i­ty of police to do their jobs effectively.
I use this medi­um once again to call on the Government to repeal the INDECOM Act, start over tak­ing into account the data from all sides , re-debate the leg­is­la­tion and come up with a law which effec­tive­ly tar­gets rogue cops but does not stand in the way of effec­tive law enforcement.
The INDECOM Act in it’s present form is the great­est enhancer of crime in Jamaica presently.