CARL LUBSEY and Donovan Henry are dead. Both men were specialist divers employed to search for drugs under the hulls of ships. The police have little doubt that the men were murdered because of their jobs. That's the word from narcotics chief Snr. Supt. Carl Williams.
Questions about the circumstances of the men's death were raised by Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga at the JLP annual conference earlier this month. The parliamentary motion by backbencher Doreen Chen for Mr. Seaga and other parliamentarians to pass on to the police any information they might have on the involvement of the police and politicians with drug running and the attendant corruption and violence could not be more in order.
In response to widespread speculation about the existence of tapes of conversations between Cabinet members and drug dons and the involvement of the police with Colombian drug traffickers, 17 members of the Cabinet have issued a joint statement challenging the public to produce evidence linking any of them to the issue.
The murder of Carl Lubsey and of Donovan Henry, state employees engaged in anti-narcotics operations, is yet another ominous sign of the escalation of the drug war from the side of the traffickers and their partners in high places. According to reports, several attempts had been made to bribe Mr. Lubsey to the tune of several million dollars. He turned them down and was executed while driving to work. What will very likely be left uninvestigated and unsaid is who offered the bribe.
In a system such as the drug trade where terrorist tactics and flagrant executions are routinely used to enforce silence and complicity, aided and abetted by elements of the state security apparatus and even of the government itself, information is going to be hard to come by. The traffickers know that and exploit it to the max; members of the Cabinet, sworn to the good governance of Jamaica, should know that too and should move with urgency to protect the country and not just themselves. But the open question now is how far the colombianisation of this country has gone and whether a reversal is possible. No one would now question the deep involvement of elements among the guardians of the state in activities which threaten the narco-destruction of the integrity of the state.
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
