Opposition Leader Bruce Golding yesterday said he will, at the next Vale Royal Summit this month with Prime Minister P J Patterson, place squarely on the table the dismantling of political garrisons and examine recommendations made by the Wolfe and Carr committees nearly a decade ago on the highly contentious issue.

“It is imperative for us to address in a frontal way, the question of garrison politics and the specific recommendations that were made by the Carr Committee and the Wolfe Committee as to how garrison politics ought to be transformed, how the garrisons ought to be dismantled (and) how we need to reshape the politics that exist in these communities,” Golding told St Andrew Rotarians at their weekly luncheon at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.

“We need to examine those recommendations and we must be prepared to examine them and to take firm decisions, and to implement those decisions so that what constitutes now an obstacle, a hindrance to the effective policing of these communities and the establishment of effective relationship between these communities and the police – we can get beyond that,” he added.

Golding’s announcement came just over two weeks after Guardsman Group chairman and CEO Kenny Benjamin called for joint action from Jamaica’s two major political parties to dismantle garrison constituencies.

“Why is this subject not a major issue of debate during this critical time of our political life where the leadership of our major political parties is in transition?” asked Benjamin in an address after he was named the Observer’s Business Leader of the Year for 2004 on May 28.

Garrison constituencies are ones in which one political party commands total control, usually getting 100 per cent voting support from all the residents.

They are usually maintained by so-called ‘dons’ or community leaders and their thuggish enforcers who, in the past, depended on political bosses for patronage.

In recent years, however, while the dons have maintained some contact with politicians, they have independently enriched themselves via the drug trade and extortion rackets and enjoy the protection of their communities because of their benevolence.

But yesterday, Golding, the member of parliament for West Kingston – one of several garrisons in the capital – said that political leaders must direct the way in curbing the current wave of crime that has resulted in more than 580 murders since the beginning of this year.

He suggested, though, that the Government should not seek to form a new task force to combat crime, saying that new studies and recommendations may only be a repeat of past efforts.

“Although the country has got to a state where it is again caught in a state of panic, where people are calling for something to be done, I hope that we won’t seek to soothe those concerns, we won’t seek to apply some sort of therapeutic treatment, by setting up yet another task force,” he said.

“If you look at all of these studies that have been done over the last 30 years, there is so much that is common to all of them, there is so much that is merely a repetition of the earlier report,” he noted.

What the country is facing, the opposition leader said, was a “huge implementation deficit”, as Government has failed to implement numerous recommendations made by various task forces formed over the past 30 years.

“These studies have, to a great extent, analysed the problems, identified the causes of the problems; they have provided recommendations as to what ought to be done,” he said, noting that the years of neglect have only served to further nurture the crisis.

– martina@jamaicaobserver.com