IN the 1980s, Rema was used, abused, chewed and spat out by Tivoli Gardens, its dons and its many guns.

One day in May 1984, word came that Rema had 'dissed' Tivoli. For those who came in late, Rema is in that thick finger poking into the PNP constituency of South St Andrew. Its southern border is with Denham Town.

Constituency border cuts many years ago gave it its status as a JLP pocket in a PNP constituency and for many years it was Tivoli's puppy. Rema men in the 1980s were known as the most fearless and Tivoli used them when our tribal politics was at its worst.

When word came of the diss in May 1984, anywhere between 100 and 500 gunmen from Tivoli Gardens entered Rema through Denham Town, up Collie Smith Drive and every other entry that was possible. In those days, the 'Junglists' above Seventh Street, being PNP, stayed out of the 'war' or atrocity to come on that May day in 1984.

"They came in groups of 20, each group with a walkie-talkie radio," said one man who lives there now. "They were heavily armed and it was a little after midday."

Rema could not retaliate against 'their own' and the force that Jim Brown had amassed that day. "It seemed to me that they were looking for specific men but if they could not find who they were looking for, they simply killed someone who knew the person or was close to him," my source said.

"Conveniently, the Denham Town Police Station, slap on the border of Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town, was closed for business that day as the Tivoli gunmen ran wild, killing our people. I was a teenager then and I had taken up shelter in a house above Seventh Street. It was my cousin's house."

In those days the police force, from commissioner right down to constable, was highly politicised.

At the end of the day eight young men were shot dead. "Many people forgot that on the next day the Tivoli gunmen returned and shot dead five more. People just don't want to talk about it," he said.

What we do know is that Jim Brown was arrested, tried and freed in the courts. Outside the courts there was much jubilation. His supporters fired gunshots into the air as the helpless policemen watched and could do little. Jim Brown was a god then.

What we do know is that Eddie Seaga, who was prime minister then, met with those involved and with senior members of his Cabinet -- some of whom are around today -- sat with Jim Brown, drank beer and in an attempt to make peace said, 'Let bygones be bygones.'

In 1984 it was Rema. Thirteen people shot dead in two days. Twenty-six years later, because we failed to properly address the matter and spouted the madness of 'let bygones be bygones' we have had the killings of eight people in Tredegar Park.

We never seem to learn.

Not a good season for politicians

With one scandal after another dogging the ruling JLP administration, and the ghosts of former scandals serving to haunt the Opposition PNP, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that it is either that our politicians are rotten or the system in place encourages the raiding of the barn and the making of secretive, self-serving deals.

It is typical for the man at street level to say, 'Di whole a dem a tief,' while he regularly steals from his employer. His culture of accepting the job and exploiting 'di runnings' there is, to him, in no way connected to the more destructive one of expecting that politicians will raid the public purse, and it will be OK as long as he and the party he supports share in the booty.

Well-known businessman Jimmy Moss Solomon last week resigned from the boards of a few statutory entities and in doing so he cited, not specifics, but the broader matter of the JLP and PNP not willing to clean up their act. To buy into Moss Solomon's approach, the PNP and the JLP are quite fine with all that has taken place in our politics of the last 50 years and have no intention of changing it.

I am a little disappointed that Jimmy Moss-Solomon did not give us a few details. Did a particular board member or an entire board request that he rubber-stamp a particular matter? Had he been complicit in such matters before but had become sufficiently fed up and disgusted to the point of severing all ties with these entities?

We do not know, because in Moss Solomon's departure it seems more about him than about the rottenness of the very system he would like us to focus on.

According to the NDM in its latest hymnal, er, press release, 'Time to Love Jamaica First,' "The NDM is of the view that Mr James Moss-Solomon has demonstrated that he put principle and Jamaica above personal or party political considerations, which is something that the JLP and PNP leaders, some private sector members and also some noted academics have constantly failed to do.

"The NDM applauds Mr Moss-Solomon and hopes that he will give consideration to helping to bring Jamaica to a place where we can all be proud to say "We are Jamaicans."

Jimmy Moss-Solomon has earned his stripes in Jamaica and he has done quite well. The question is, could he have done more for Jamaica by remaining inside the system than by walking away from it, as rotten as it appears to be? Another is, must we take it, based on his statement, that all who remain must be considered tainted?

We are not going to pretend naivety here. We know that certain boards are peopled by weak-kneed, rubber-stamped suits whose duty is to conspire to raid the public purse. Many of them are run by various chairpersons who are little more than village tyrants, and too many of these board members are willing to give in to what the chairpersons direct.

Could Moss-Solomon not stay and talk out loud whenever anomalies arise? Was he afraid of being voted off at which time much more could have been aired?

It is known that whenever moves like his are announced, some amount of negative PR is usually engineered to make it appear that it is the mover who is at fault. That is almost standard politics. I would have preferred for Moss-Solomon to give us dates, particulars and the straw which broke the camel's back.

When Hardley Lewin was engineered out of the police commissioner's office, he spoke and he did not mince his words. I like that approach, which can be a very lonely one. The typical action is a resignation, then silence, then subterfuge, then giving someone like me inside information with the proviso, 'If you write this, they will know that it is I who gave it to you.'

Many people who were public servants are deathly afraid of taking on the system full frontal. I know some who have been threatened should they divulge anything. In this way, the rotten system preserves itself by knowing that most public servants who resign after being at ground zero of corruption are either spineless creatures or those who know the extent to which the dangerous blowback of the system could affect them and their loved ones.

In that regard I commend Jimmy Moss-Solomon, even as I hoped he would have run into the tape at the same speed that he had left the blocks.

One person wrote me on the matter of our public servants not just doing a good job but yielding to a higher calling. "Mr Wignall, every man has to reach a point at which he must make a stand for something. Our contractor general, Mr Christie, has heeded that call in his profession. He has set the precedent for others to follow; he may go down in Jamaica's history as the best ever in his area, and not because that is what he seeks, because he is heeding to a higher calling -- humanity"

Has G2K lost its way?

One of the main concerns I have about the state of our politics is not so much the shortage of qualified and committed young people to fill the slot of the 'oldsters' in the JLP and the PNP, but the willingness of these youngsters to become little clones of their political masters.

I am afraid that Delano Seiveright, bright and highly competent head of G2K, is fast becoming another such clone. Each week he trots out the usual lines from the JLP — factual but, in the context of scandal after scandal — depressingly deceptive as if somehow the scandals did not happen.

Seiveright has to do what a politician has to do, that is, carry the party line, and, truth be told, he does it well, too well. The youth arm of any political party must, as a part of its business, challenge the oldsters to a 'higher calling', if you may.

Granted, we know that the culture of JLPNP politics does not allow for dissension from within. That is sacrilege. But certainly, bright youngsters like Seiveright must know that increasing numbers of people, and especially the younger ones, are losing interest in party politics because, from their perspective, party politics has done more to create an organism that politicians can feed off like parasites rather than build a viable nation for the benefit of the majority of its people.

Someone like Seiveright has a special duty in building a bridge to span the reintroduction of politics to the young. If he believes the best way to do this it to trot out the same old same old, he is on a delusionary path.

He needs to recognise that if more people adopt the action of Jimmy Moss-Solomon, it will, in one breath point to the faults but, in another breath, it will lead to a landscape filled with charlatans, always making a raid on the barn.

When political youngsters play the role of willing clones they turn off the brighter, younger people in the population who may want to make a contribution. Seiveright has a special duty, not to separate himself from his political masters but to be that challenging part of their collective conscience, fully recognising that most times the oldsters are not even aware that their ways and approaches are outmoded.

G2K had this sort of leadership when it began, but in recent years, especially since the JLP took power in 2007, to my way of seeing it, the group has fallen under the spell of raw power, especially as the JLP has no huge majority to play with.

But even with that as a major consideration, youngsters like Seiveright needed to have separated themselves from the sort of tribal approaches as once practised by Andre Franklin. G2K must begin to see that part of itself that has one foot and one ear outside of the party.

The one foot outside the party must learn to walk the rough path of the people who are confused at what is taking place inside the JLP. The one ear outside the party must learn to listen to the voices that exist outside of Belmont Road. Seiveright needs to recognise that the oldsters cannot do any more because in their dotage, they now need to be led up to speed on what the people expect from politicians in a fast-changing world.

Many of the oldsters in the JLP Cabinet can barely use their BlackBerrys. We have seen that 'news' is no longer confined to the once exclusive clubs of the newspapers, radio and television. In like fashion, our politics and its approach have changed but it's a hard sell to convince the oldsters of this.

For this reason, people like Seiveright deny themselves their true roles when most of what they do is ape the dinosaurs. OK, some of that will take place because games are always being played inside political parties, and if they are not handled skilfully, one will easily find oneself on the outside before one's teeth are cut on the craft and the art of politics.

If, however, the main role of any youth arm in a political party is the marshalling of new blood inside the party and attracting new ears and eyes and voices in support of it, then Seiveright has it all wrong. To wholeheartedly support the JLP administration in the Manatt matter then duck questions on it because the political masters there had pronounced it dead is not the way to go.

Why could Seiveright not have said, 'It is obvious that mistakes were made there and some Jamaicans are still asking questions. As a political party, the JLP has its fair share of faults but I am certain that when all is added up, those people will eventually forgive us.' Does he not believe that that would be accepted, in part or full?

As long as the JLP wants to replenish its stock of supporters, it is incumbent that its main youth arm be new and different. If the JLP wants to remain as just the second best also-ran, then it should continue to do what it is doing. It won't get any better but it will not get any worse. Maybe that is the goal.

observemark@gmail.com

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