Not unexpectedly, the prolonged debate in Jamaica's Parliament on whether or not the
State should retain or abolish the death
penalty for capital murderers has drawn considerable interest abroad.

Some, caught up in emotion, may wish to suggest that international thinking on the issue should have no bearing on the debate or the conscience vote which is now expected this week.

In fact, though, our parliamentarians would do well to pay close attention to opinion not just locally but internationally.

For example, the European Union (EU) - to which countries like Jamaica and it's Caribbean neighbours and Caricom partners are closely connected through aid, trade, history and a huge diaspora - have long made it's opposition to the death penalty abundantly clear.

There have been more than subtle hints and threats from the Europeans that considerations such as the death penalty and gay rights - lumped under human rights - could in future be linked to the denial of or restrictions on aid and trade.

Indeed, there are some who believe that the Europeans have refrained from going the route of wholesale sanctions on such issues largely because of the fact of a George Bush-led Republican Government in the United States over the last eight years.

Many Jamaicans may not wish to believe it, but there are some issues on which the majority of our people have more in common with the Republicans and the American political right than with the liberal Democrats and president-elect Mr Barack Obama. Those issues include gay rights, abortion and, of course, the death penalty.

While Mr Obama has voiced support for capital punishment in cases in which "the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage", he is also on record as suggesting that it does not deter crime.

It seems reasonable to assume that with the more "dovish" Democrats now about to take full power in the United States, both at the executive and parliamentary levels, there will be renewed lobbying from the EU
and human rights groups for global abolition of the death penalty.

Of course, in so far as Jamaica is concerned, all of the above could prove to be no more than academic unless the Government takes steps to ensure that a likely pro-hanging decision in the parliamentary conscience vote is not mere window dressing.

For, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this space and elsewhere, unless a way can be found to bypass the UK Privy Council's Pratt and Morgan ruling that condemned men should have their death sentences commuted after five years, there is unlikely to be any State executions any time soon.

The apparent willingness of the Government to take on board an Opposition proposal to make that bypass possible is really what we will have to watch.

If that happens, we can expect the EU and others breathing down our necks.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World