TIVOLI GARDENS REVISITED:

Armed mer­ce­nar­ies erect bar­ri­cades to an entry point into Tivoli Gardens as they pre­pared for war against the Jamaican State in 2010.

This coun­try we know as Jamaica, some of us love, some claim to love, is fast descend­ing into a cesspool which will only attract the worst types of crim­i­nals, if we do not put a stop to it now.

Decent peo­ple are already shun­ning our beloved coun­try because of what’s hap­pen­ing there, we are fast-track­ing to becom­ing anoth­er sub-Saharan hell-hole.
Why is the National empha­sis on what is alleged­ly done by mem­bers of the Military, most of which are like­ly dis­tor­tions and dis­trac­tions ? (NOT argu­ing there should be no accountability).!!!
The National con­sen­sus must expo­nen­tial­ly be cen­tered on find­ing out how a com­mu­ni­ty got to what Tivoli Gardens mat­estacised into.

More impor­tant­ly, how could a local crim­i­nal become so pow­er­ful, that he was vir­tu­al­ly untouch­able locally.
Why the hell are we re-writ­ing history ?

Police sta­tion burns:

The Office of Public Defender has final­ly released the long await­ed Report, of what exact­ly tran­spired in the West Kingston Community of Tivoli Gardens in 2010. This has revived a vibrant debate on the issue, most of which so far has been in my esti­ma­tion fright­en­ing­ly mis­guid­ed and unpatriotic.

Someone not con­ver­sant with what led up to the Jamaican State annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try, could seri­ous­ly walk away believ­ing that the peo­ple are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from a for­eign gov­ern­ment which ille­gal­ly invad­ed their enclave.

Bullet rid­dled police station:

The truth of the mat­ter is, since it’s incep­tion Tivoli Gardens has long enjoyed a type of favored sta­tus, one that is un-earned, but which has been bestowed on it nonethe­less ‚much like the fabled old­er sis­ters in the Cinderella story.

Tivoli Gardens, the brain-child of it’s patron Edward Seaga, for­mer Prime Minister and peren­ni­al mem­ber of Parliament, had a split per­son­al­i­ty. At best it was a great exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty, a great com­mu­ni­ty clin­ic, my old­est son was born in that very clin­ic. A great Comprehensive High School, and oth­er social ameni­ties. Tivoli Gardens was ground zero for cul­ture and sports, much to the delight of Seaga who saw his efforts at social engi­neer­ing sim­i­lar to a par­ent child relationship.

Darling Street Police Station destroyed:

But like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga failed to heed the prob­lems ema­nat­ing from that com­mu­ni­ty, much like a par­ent ignor­ing and deny­ing the wrongs been done by his teenag­er. Many argue that Seaga more than ignored those prob­lems, he was the cre­ator of those problems.

The Don cul­ture which evolved from the Tivoli com­mu­ni­ty mod­el, is now pos­ing an exis­ten­tial threat to the social order of Jamaica as we knew it. Seaga fun­da­men­tal­ly believed in the social mod­el he cre­at­ed, which was one of a hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture with him at the polit­i­cal zenith. He also cre­at­ed the space for a Don or so-called(com­mu­ni­ty leader) who saw to the day to day affairs of the community.

This com­mu­ni­ty leader han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty, the prob­lem with this how­ev­er is that it removed Tivoli from the sphere of influ­ence of the broad­er Jamaican soci­ety. This includes the abil­i­ty of the Police to arrest felons who take up res­i­dence there after they had com­mit­ted egre­gious crimes in oth­er parts of the country.

Seaga famous­ly asked years ago , quote: “What was Adams doing in Tivoli Gardens”? in ref­er­ence to then leader of the crime man­age­ment unit going into the com­mu­ni­ty to appre­hend want­ed men. Seaga unwit­ting­ly gave a peek into how he real­ly saw the com­mu­ni­ty, appar­ent­ly as his fief­dom not sub­ject to the reach or dic­tates of the rule of law.

As a boy grow­ing up in Saint Catherine, I was a fan of Tivoli Gardens, I saw that com­mu­ni­ty as a nec­es­sary counter-bal­ance to the con­fla­gra­tion of PNP gar­risons which had lit­er­al­ly sprung up every­where in the Kingston and Saint Andrew met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Years lat­er I changed my mind­set when as part of a Special Police unit from the Mobile Reserve I took sus­tained auto­mat­ic fire from that com­mu­ni­ty at the Denham Town Police Station, hun­kered down and ordered by the Superintendent not to return fire.

When the fir­ing ceased a police truck parked in front of the sta­tion was destroyed, bul­let holes pot-marked the walls of the sta­tion, where panes of glass exist­ed min­utes ear­li­er shards of shat­tered glass told a jagged tale of hor­ror. No one was ever held respon­si­ble. The prob­lem with what hap­pened that day is this, it hap­pened sim­ply because one boot-lick­ing, lap-dog Superintendent had his nose too far up Seaga’s ass to get out of our way, or was too much of a cow­ard to get out-of-the-way and let us do our jobs. My per­cep­tion of the JCF changed that day, it has­n’t improved since.

How could that com­mu­ni­ty not take on a brazen don’t care atti­tude of being untouchable?

The group of Ranger Squad mem­bers, of which I was a part, were more than capa­ble of han­dling those scum­bags that day. We were ide­al­ists who would have made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice for the Jamaican state. Politics drove a nail in the cof­fin of the Jamaican state on that day.

In any coun­try where the rule of law is usurped, the empha­sis lat­er is gen­er­al­ly to make sure that those opposed to the nat­ur­al order are dealt with quick­ly and deci­sive­ly. This is true even in states that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly adhere to demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

In Jamaica today, the con­ver­sa­tion is cen­tered around com­pen­sa­tion for res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens. From the bull-shit report com­ing out of Witter’s office, to the par­lia­ment, to the reg­u­lar vil­lage lawyer, the argu­ment is about appor­tion­ing blame to the foot sol­diers of the secu­ri­ty forces who went in and restored san­i­ty to that vol­canic situation.

In most coun­tries those mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces would have received com­men­da­tions and have acco­lades heaped on them. In Jamaica the out­ra­geous sen­ti­ment is that a com­mis­sion of inquiry must now be con­vened to dig fur­ther to see what ille­gal act was com­mit­ted by those brave mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, (if any) in what was a the­ater of war.

If you are final­ly appalled and out­raged you should be, this is in addi­tion to the wast­ed $76.098-million which has been allo­cat­ed to Witter’s office for this year. For that mon­ey, tax-pay­ers received a report call­ing for a com­mis­sion of inquiry, and yes that the peo­ple in Tivoli Gardens should be paid handsomely.

You ask what they should be paid for ? Your guess is as good as mine.

Jamaica just secured anoth­er loan from the International Monetary Fund, this mon­ey though nec­es­sary for the short term, will be part­ly respon­si­ble for dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the coun­try’s attempt at sol­ven­cy in the future.

This will add to the coun­try’s bur­geon­ing debt cri­sis. Working police offi­cers, nurs­es teach­ers , fire­men and oth­ers, who apply to the National Housing Trust for mort­gages are turned down, years ago I was one of them. The Jamaican Prime Minister recent­ly announced a plan to build hous­ing units for urban dwellers, to peo­ple famil­iar with Jamaica, these are peo­ple who are unable finan­cial­ly to pay for those homes. They are polit­i­cal hand­outs for votes.

In effect, it is a dis­gust­ing­ly cyn­i­cal attempt at vote buy­ing, while work­ing pro­fes­sion­als are turned away , unem­ployed peo­ple will be housed at no cost to them­selves. If you ever won­dered why Jamaica is the way it is you should digest what you just read here today.