Respect The Wishes Of The People:

Majority of the peo­ple liv­ing in the Caribbean region sup­port the death penal­ty, yet many states lead­er­ship have decid­ed that they are smarter that the peo­ple who elect­ed them to office, so they have decid­ed not to hang murderers.

The Jamaica Labour Party resisted the full powers of the CCJ on the basis that it was a hanging court.^{[citation needed]} In February, 2005, the Privy Council declared that the CCJ-related companion bills passed by the Jamaican Parliamentin 2004 were unconstitutional and therefore void. The bills would have established the CCJ as the final court of appeal in Jamaica.^{[citation needed]} The Privy Council sided with the appellant, including the Jamaican Council for Human Rights, the Jamaica Labour Party and others, ruling that to establish the CCJ as the country’s final appeal court, without it being entrenched in the constitution would undermine the protection given to the Jamaican people by Chapter Seven of the Jamaican constitution. The court concluded that the procedure appropriate for an amendment of an entrenched provision — a referendum — should have been followed. In January 2012, the new People’s National Party government of Jamaica stated that it would be moving to have the CCJ serving in both the original and appellate jurisdictions for Jamaica in time for the 50^th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence in August.^[14] The Jamaica Labor Party, now in opposition, stated it has no issue with the government’s plan and seems set to support the move despite strident objections in the past.^[15] In February, the foreign affairs minister of Jamaica has also called on Trinidad & Tobago to sign on to the court’s appellate jurisdiction to mark that country’s 50^th anniversary of independence.http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​a​r​i​b​b​e​a​n​_​C​o​u​r​t​_​o​f​_​J​u​s​t​ice

The Jamaica Labor Party ini­tial­ly object­ed to the Caribbean court, on the basis that it was a hang­ing court. Even though the par­ty lat­er seemed to side with the People’s National Party’s plan to have the Caribbean court as the final arbiter in orig­i­nal and appel­late juris­dic­tion for Jamaica’s 50^th anniver­sary of it’s independence.

Attorney General Patrick Atkinson has reit­er­at­ed that there is no need for a nation­al ref­er­en­dum on whether Jamaica should adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as its final court of appeal.  Legislation has already been tabled to amend the con­sti­tu­tion to replace the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final appel­late court. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​5​305

I dis­agree with Atkinson, the mat­ter should be put to a vote, yes the peo­ple elect­ed the gov­ern­ment to make deci­sions for them, but on a mat­ter of this sig­nif­i­cance it is impor­tant for pos­ter­i­ty that the peo­ple get their say.

The peo­ple in Barbados Belize and Guyana have already ful­ly adopt­ed the CCJ as their final court.

The Labor Party nev­er stat­ed what issues it had with hang­ing , out­side of its claim that the CCJ was a hang­ing court. The par­ty obvi­ous­ly had it’s come to Jesus moment and saw the light. However there are still lin­ger­ing trep­i­da­tion on the part of the Jamaican gov­ern­ment to car­ry out the will of the peo­ple and put vio­lent crim­i­nals who have exhaust­ed their appeals to death.

Putting these crim­i­nals to death is not a panacea that will fix the coun­try’s crime prob­lem but it is one more way the gov­ern­ment, act­ing on the wish­es of the peo­ple can sig­nal to crim­i­nals, that it is seri­ous about deal­ing with crime and ter­ror in the coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion people.

The long over­due police sta­tion in Falmouth Trelawny is a wel­come change for the men and women who were forced to work in the dilap­i­dat­ed dump they pre­vi­ous­ly had. But build­ing police sta­tions are just a tiny part of what needs to be done to fix our coun­try’s bur­geon­ing crime problem.

The issues that some raise about human rights in Jamaica are legit­i­mate issues, what dis­qual­i­fies lob­bies like Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) from legit­i­ma­cy is their sin­gle-mind­ed focus on what they per­ceive human rights abus­es to be. In the case of the group JFJ their under­stand­ing of human rights abuse is con­fined to alleged abuse com­mit­ted by agents of the state.

I believe that the issue of human rights are not con­fined to pro­tec­tion from excess of state agents, but are uni­ver­sal. I par­tic­u­lar­ly believe the rights of vic­tims of crime far out­weigh the rights of those who have con­scious­ly decid­ed to break the coun­try’s laws, then turn around and demand respect for their rights.

People like Carolyn Gomes and Susan Goffe of JFJ and oth­ers who believe that fight­ing for the rights of the most despi­ca­ble crim­i­nals is a wor­thy endeav­or are well with­in their rights, we dis­agree. What we will be doing here is to tell the Jamaican peo­ple what they real­ly stand for , even as we ask them to obey the coun­try’s laws, which is one way of reduc­ing the risk of vio­lent con­fronta­tions with agents of the state.

Let me be clear, I spent lit­er­al­ly 10 years as a front line cop, serv­ing both on the high-inten­si­ty for­mer Ranger squad, and as a mem­ber of the CIB in the lat­ter part of my ser­vice. I have removed many weapons from the streets and put scores of crim­i­nals in jail where they belong, to include cops who decid­ed to be crim­i­nals. I have been shot in the line of duty, yet I have nev­er had the need to pull the trig­ger on any­one in the capac­i­ty of judge and jury.

Killing crim­i­nals regard­less of their crimes, extra-judi­cial­ly is crim­i­nal and serves no one. There are those who say they were police offi­cers who are now jump­ing on the band-wag­gon against police offi­cers, I will with­hold my com­ments on those.

Police offi­cers should have no com­punc­tion about tak­ing out crim­i­nals who try to kill them or has killed some­one and refus­es to sur­ren­der. Neither Carolyn Gomes, Horace Levy, Susan Goffe, Earl Witter, or Terrence Williams have the right to make that call for you. They are grand-stand­ing Elitist, do your jobs.

The crim­i­nals lob­by called JFJ is the mouth­piece of Amnesty International and the Inter American Commission of Human Rights, these agen­cies do good work in their base coun­tries , Britain and the United States respec­tive­ly, yet nei­ther agen­cies can alter or pro­pose leg­is­la­tion which will inter­fere with the rule of law or the actions of police offi­cers doing their law­ful duties.

In fact, despite con­tro­ver­sial killings of minor­i­ty men all over America and in Britain by police, both these groups are nev­er heard from. These mat­ters are left up to duly autho­rized inves­tiga­tive bod­ies, at either the local, state or fed­er­al lev­els to do what they are trained to do, then the courts do what they are sup­posed to do.

The gov­ern­ment may crow about the build­ing of the new police sta­tion in Falmoth Trelawny, but unless there are con­crete mea­sures in place to deal with crim­i­nals these facil­i­ties are noth­ing more than win­dow dress­ing , band-aid on gun-shot wounds.

Put the mat­ter to the peo­ple let them decide, they will decide to move ful­ly to the CCJ. There is no rea­son we should be ask­ing England to decide our cas­es for us. It is a silent but embar­rass­ing acqui­es­cence to the argu­ments that we are not smart enough to gov­ern ourselves.

Moving to the CCJ will allow the peo­ple’s wish­es to be car­ried out and mur­der­ing crim­i­nals can get their just deserts, right labor party?