Winning at an ugly cost

Dawn Ritch, Contributor

A PEOPLE'S National Party (PNP) Government has traditionally been incapable of keeping public order or running the country. It truly excels at pointing fingers, however, and goes to extravagant lengths to do so.

Right now they would have the country believe that Opposition Leader Edward Seaga, whose party is leading in the polls, is fire-bombing some of his own constituents because they allegedly support the PNP. This is the greatest rubbish.

In the early morning between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. last week a barrage of gunfire on three different streets in western Kingston left over 200 spent shells. If 200 shots were fired in four hours, how many unspent shells are being held in reserve?

Mr. Seaga, who like the rest of us is battling with meagre resources to keep life and limb together, has the money to fund, and equip and maintain a private army? What nonsense. Yet this is what PNP Vice President Dr. Peter Phillips would have us believe. Or is it easier to believe the reality of what the entire country sees unfolding?

As proof of Mr. Seaga's earliest signs of alleged ruthlessness, however, Dr. Phillips said on radio last week that the former "bulldozed Back o'wall". Mr. Seaga didn't bulldoze Back o'wall, he decanted the community from shacks without running water into permanent dwellings served by public utilities for which hundreds of other communities in Jamaica still yearn.

Election violence?

In what looks like the lead-up to a general election, the PNP has begun its time-honoured practice of fomenting violence against west Kingston, this time by suggesting that "Haggart" was murdered by Tivoli men, and by attacking the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader personally.

PNP State Minister Errol Ennis has had to resign because of tendering altogether much too many bad cheques. Referring to this, Dr. Phillips recently said that Mr. Seaga should therefore also resign because he "forgot a loan" and is in debt.

Tendering bad cheques can amount to fraud. Fraud is a crime, debt is not. Not yet anyway. But who knows the longer they stay the PNP Government might make it so.

No one who wants to see a change of Government likes the fact that Mr. Seaga is in debt. The one consolation is that it means he has kept his dignity and not been the beneficiary of massive write-offs like certain members of the PNP Cabinet. That his party is ahead in the polls means that the country has forgiven him, even if his bankers, who are presently controlled by Government, have not.

Unforgivable

The senseless killing however, and burning-out of innocent people in pursuit of a political agenda is unforgivable.

The pages of this newspaper have recorded what is now history. Before the General Election in 1976 homes were fire-bombed and eight people including children killed in the Orange Lane Fire in JLP West Kingston.

Then there was the Green Bay Massacre in 1978, when JLP supporters from Southside were lured to Green Bay by members of the JDF with the promise of jobs, and instead lined up and executed; the Gold Street Massacre in 1980 when a dance in progress was shot up in reprisal for JLP insults; and the tragic killing of two children in Top Hill during the election campaign of 1980.

Before the last general election in 1997 soldiers and police stormed Tivoli and fired an estimated 4,000 rounds of ammunition over two days. Three women and one child were killed in the assault, and not one gunman, gun or spent shell recovered in an operation supposedly mounted with that single objective. There was, on this occasion however, no commission of enquiry.

No excuse

It is as well to recall these events because they were clustered around general elections held while the PNP was the Government. This new round of violence and terror unleashed in western Kingston bodes ill for the lives of countless innocent people there and elsewhere. More people were murdered in Jamaica last month than at any time here since 1997, the year of the last general election.

I don't have any particular care for west Kingston people, but that is hardly an excuse to fire-bomb them. If the outbreak continues, JDF tanks shelling that constituency cannot be far off.

K.D. Knight, Minister of National Security and Justice, in response to public outrage at the strong official support for the Haggart funeral, said that there was no difference between white collar crime and the don in an inner city. Fraud among the middle class, however, is a much different crime from rape, murder and torture which is what dons do.

That Mr. Knight can't tell the difference shows his compass is irreparably broken, even if it provides the unreasonable basis on which he turns a blind eye to the mounting violent crime engulfing the country.

The PNP needs to find another way to win the elections. Its Chairman Bobby Pickersgill recently said that since they believe that the PNP is best for the country, anything that will keep them in power is to be pursued. This sounds very much like they intend to win the election at all costs. Does that include murder and mayhem? I shudder at the consequences for Jamaica.

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