THE commission that probed last year’s bloody violence in West Kingston has sharply rapped Opposition leader, Edward Seaga, for what it essentially characterised as a cynical obstinacy when others were attempting to reduce tensions in the weeks and days ahead of the July 7 big battle between gunmen and the security forces.

At the same time the commissioners painted Tivoli Gardens, Seaga’s powerful stronghold in West Kingston, as a lawless enclave where “jungle justice” is practised. It represented, they warned, an urgent problem to be dealt with by all the stakeholders in the Jamaican society — government, leaders of the political parties, the private sector and the church.

“Tivoli Gardens poses for politicians and members of the security forces a problem of enormous proportions,” said the commission, which was chaired by the former chief justice of Canada’s federal supreme court, Grenada-born Julius Isaac.

“It seems to us that there should not be an inch of Jamaican soil where the writ of the commissioner of police does not run, and yet Tivoli Gardens, we are told, is the only garrison community where entry by the security forces is on sufferance,” the commissioners said.

Seaga, who has been the parliamentary representative for West Kingston for nearly 40 years, declined, through a spokesperson, to respond to the observations and findings of the commission, from whose hearings his Jamaica Labour Party had withdrawn.

Instead, the Observer was referred to an affidavit that Seaga sent to the commission in March after its members, warning that in camera and other evidence against him could lead to negative findings in their report, and inviting the Opposition leader to respond.

Seaga’s affidavit essentially repeated the JLP’s consistent claim that the July 7-10 incident a year ago, which claimed 27 lives, as well as violence before that big eruption, was engineered by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) to paint West Kingston as violent and to embarrass its leader.

It also reiterated the JLP’s position that the security forces had fired wildly and randomly in West Kingston at unarmed civilians and rejected evidence by Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, who led the police party, that on July 7 had been offered “safe passage” out of the area by Seaga.

But the commissioners, in their findings, rejected the notion of callous shootings by the security forces or that their mission to the Tivoli Gardens/Denham Town area on July 7 was politically motivated.

They had gone to an old people’s home in Denham Town, on the basis of intelligence, to search for guns, ammunition, drugs and wanted men and the came under attack.

The attacks were placed in the context of urban terrorism and commissioners pointed analysts to a 1998 book Understanding Terrorism by American author, James Poland.

Said the commissioners: “The attacks against the security forces, the damage and destruction of their vehicles, the firing on the JDF armoured cars engaged in extracting security forces from the danger zones and other vehicles conveying injured security personnel to the hospital, all suggest and express an extremely high level of hostility and rage against the security forces, which has been building up over time and which went beyond a need to conceal and store illegal drugs, weapons and ammunition.”

Had not the security forces acted responsibly and exerted caution and restraint, the casualties and fatalities may have been higher, the commission held.

In fact, Seaga is the only individual specifically knocked for his actions prior to the Saturday morning flare-up or the prior violence in the western section of the city following the April 2001 killing of William (Willy Haggart) Moore, the Arnett Gardens “don”, who was cut down gangland style. Two of his friends were killed in that shooting.

The Haggart murder ignited a series of gang disputes in the pro-PNP communities of Arnette Gardens and Rema, which later shifted to fights between gangs from Rema and the pro-JLP communities of Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens and sections of nearby Hannah Town. Several persons were killed over nearly three months and scores were forced to flee their homes.

In his evidence at the commission, police chief, Francis Forbes, recalled that on July 5, during a visit to the area after an intense episode of violence, he proposed to Seaga that the Opposition leader, joined by Omar Davies, the PNP parliamentarian for the constituency within which Arnette Gardens and Rema fall, as well as the heads of the police and army walk through the area.

Seaga at the time dismissed the suggestion and in his affidavit rejected it as a “public relations gimmick” which could not respond to people’s need for police protection.

The commissioners in their report picked up on Seaga’s response and “by way of contrast” noted the testimony of Davies who said that he was prepared to go on the walk with Seaga and had publicly indicated his willingness.

Davies agreed that the walk would have been symbolic but argued that “a powerful message is sent if the persons are influenced” by seeing their leaders interacting with each other.

Said the commissioners: “It occurs to us that in light of the difficulties which the security forces were facing in coping with the situation, Mr Seaga’s response was unhelpful. In our judgment, it was a missed opportunity to have dismissed the (police) commissioner’s proposal out of hand as a “public relations gimmick”. We contrast this with the approach of Dr Omar Davies…”

The commissioners also drew attention to the testimony of Paul Burke in which he spoke of efforts by himself and officials of the JLP to resolve the post-Haggart violence in downtown Kingston.

When those efforts failed, Burke testified, both sides decided to ask the Jamaica Council of Churches to mediate between the factions. At the time, Burke claimed, it was recognised that the violence was gang-related and not political.

Said the commissioners: “Mr Seaga effectively destroyed any hope of solving the dispute short of violence by making two separate statements; the first, that the violence was motivated by the PNP for the purpose of embarrassing him and confining him to his constituency, and, second, that the Jamaica Council of Churches lacked credibility to settle the dispute.

“These statements were, to say the least, unhelpful and would have been better left unsaid. We are in agreement with the observation by the commission counsel (Norma Hylton), made in a different context, that Mr Seaga, by his conduct, could have influenced a different outcome to the dispute at that stage.”

The commission’s other significant reference to Seaga related to the July 7 encounter between Seaga and Adams over the “safe passage” issue as well as the comments made by the Opposition leader while in Tivoli Gardens.

Seaga insisted in his affidavit that when he met Adams on Spanish Town Road near to Coronation Market there was no gunfire or sign that Adams and his men had been fired at. An agitated crowd was in the area, preventing the police team from heading towards the market, because the police had shot and killed two men.

Seaga confirmed that he led the crowd away into nearby Bond Street.

The commissioners said that Seaga’s intervention then was advantageous because “it averted, temporarily, the intense gunfire exchange between criminal assailants and the security forces”.

“By his presence in Tivoli Gardens, the anger of supporters who comprised a reportedly hostile and boisterous crowd, was somewhat diffused and their threatening advances on the security forces was deflected,” the commission said.

Nonetheless, they took issue with how Seaga characterised the events of the day in interviews with journalists, although reporters implied at the inquiry that statements made by the Opposition leader were inaccurate.

Noted the commissioners: “… Assessing Mr Seaga’s role in West Kingston on July 7, we conclude that his actions might have been well intentioned, but that his message to the nation through the media seemed to have deviated from the grim reality of the events of 7-10 July, 2001.”