Meanwhile, at the Colosseum

TAMARA SCOTT-WILLIAMS

Sunday, February 27, 2011

THE Colosseum, the largest ever amphitheatre built by the Roman Empire in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, in 70AD, is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and Roman engineering. Capable of seating 50,000 spectators, it was used for public spectacles and for the staging of gladiatorial contests — the bloodiest exhibitions of public entertainment known to mankind.

Men, women and children flocked to the Colosseum to watch the bloodthirsty fighters murder each other. They cheered them on and screamed for them to kill warriors lying half-dead on the ground. "From dawn until after nightfall, fatal encounters between men and men, men and beasts, and beasts and beasts were staged in this arena, whose wooden floor was covered with sand that soaked up the blood spilled in combat."*

The gladiatorial spectacles allowed the emperors of the day to amuse and divert the attention of the "potentially unruly and dangerous city population" knowing that the spectacles would keep them "quiet".

Viewing the gladiatorial spectacles would allow "people who themselves felt powerless and brutalised" to find "some satisfaction in watching the infliction of pain on others". Vast sums were spent on these games, one of which commemorated the emperor Trajan's victories at war, featured 10,000 gladiators and lasted 123 days.

There's no telling how long our homegrown gladiatorial spectacle will continue — an application for an extension is to be considered by Cabinet — but for more than a month we have been enthralled by the proceedings of the Dudus/Manatt Commission of Inquiry. (That's Inquiry with an "I" for all of us who insist on calling it an enquiry. For the record: an inquiry is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. In the Queen's English, an enquiry is a request for information, but an inquiry is a formal investigation.) But I digress...

On Wednesday, when KD Knight repeatedly told the commissioner that he had a "particular issue" which he needed to attend to that required the adjourning of the Inquiry, it occurred to me that we had seriously lost focus. For at that very moment, anybody who was paying rapt attention knew that KD Knight had to go to take a bathroom break. Ugh!

And while I waited for him to finish his business it occurred to me that there was much going on in Jamaica to which scant regard is being paid because we've all been distracted by the histrionics, melodrama, ramblings and posturing at the Dudus/Manatt Inquiry.

While we are caught up in the merits of protecting the constitutional rights of one Christopher 'Dudus' Coke — someone who very few seem to know at all and, ironically, someone who wasn't taking any chances with our justice system, opting instead to deliver himself to the American authorities for extradition to their jurisdiction — little interest was being taken in the case against Mark Myrie, aka Buju Banton — someone everyone knows — to see if his rights were compromised and whether he in fact was being "set up".

While we're watching our legal luminaries make fun of and embarrass members of our government and the opposition, five members of our police force were accused of gang-raping a nightclub dancer and holding hostage a club filled with patrons and other dancers while ostensibly carrying out a raid on the premises. The crime is a heinous one, committed allegedly by men who are to serve and protect us. Where exactly are we headed?

While we were caught up in KD Knight's dissertations, the contractor general, Greg Christie, issued a shocking statement: "I'm leaving next year." The one man we can count on to do what is right without fear or favour has decided not to renew his contract which soon comes to an end. There appears to be one law for the rich and one for the poor in Jamaica, he charged, and it appears he's done fighting the system. Where exactly does that leave us?

In a period of less than three months, 23 people died and 194 are suspected of being poisoned by ackee. If the Ministry of Health had warned us off of ackee, I missed the ads — too busy with the Inquiry. But what could be a real crisis went almost unnoticed because, according to a ministry official: "Ackee poisoning was really not a reportable disease and so we may have been having cases of ackee poisoning in the past, which were not being reported or recorded or may have been missed [or] thought to be gastroenteritis."

Gastroenteritis, if it causes death, is no less serious than fatalities caused by ackee poisoning. Both point to serious problems in our social system: problems of poverty causing us to eat unripened, poisonous ackee, and problems of contamination of our food and water. Who exactly is looking out for us?

The Commission of Inquiry — like the gladiatorial games — provide the audience with a complete distraction from our mundane day-to-day lives as well as an ideal escape from our deplorable living conditions: crime, corruption, unemployment, food shortages, disease and unrest.

*courtesy of Sports Illustrated

scowicomm@gmail.com

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GCT to go down, white rum prices going up

Meanwhile, at the Colosseum