A week or so after the extradition, downtown Kingston, effectively void of its ‘protector’, has become one vast no-man’s land. The outburst of violence began at the moment his extradition was announced.

Police personnel in full battle gear and soldiers from the JDF are out in their numbers, day and night, but for all the good that their presence has done to ensure a full or even partial return of commercial activity, they could have instead remained at their homes or at their assigned stations.

The spate of shootings in two weeks has left 20 dead, comprising three members of the security forces, eight vendors, three shoppers, one storeowner and five young men described by the CCN as “gunmen who had brazenly opened fire on the security forces using high-powered automatic weaponry”.

The 20 dead are, however, just those confined to the immediate environs of downtown Kingston. From Flanker in St James all the way to Yallahs in the east, the violent flare-ups have been very unpredictable, but the biggest problem facing the security forces is the seeming ability of the roving bands of gunmen to strike and then blend seamlessly into the various communities. So far the death toll related to these sporadic outbursts of violence outside of the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA) has been 15, including two additional members of the security forces, eight members of the public and five gunmen.

Two days ago, a statement made by the prime minister explaining his reasons for accepting the resignation of Security Minister Dwight Nelson, by my own gleanings at street level, has been received by the public with much scepticism. “Nelson neva did a gwaan good anyway. But fi fire di man now is only trying to mek it look like seh him a du sup’m. Dat cyaan fool wi. A him fi resign.”

In his statement, the prime minister made it clear that the security forces would have the matter under control “in a matter of days”. When pressed by Cliff Hughes to give the nation an indication as to when a new security minister would be appointed, a visibly peeved Golding stared down Hughes and shot back, “The priority now is stemming the tide of violence that has gripped this nation for the last two weeks. That has to be the nation’s priority! Next question.”

Over the last two days, most businessplaces in the KMA, Spanish Town, May Pen, and to a lesser extent in key sections on the outskirts of the second city, have remained closed as fear becomes the only commodity in the marketplace. Three days ago when I drove along sections of Red Hills Road, lower Constant Spring Road, Hope Road and upper Maxfield Avenue, I saw little activity except vehicles carrying soldiers and police. Thoroughfares such as Grants Pen Road, Waltham Park Road, Olympic Way and Spanish Town Road are not places I would advise readers of this column to pass through.

The sense I had was that the security forces were confounded by the sporadic outburst of gunfire. With a dusk-to-dawn curfew in most parish capitals, some main towns and key sections of both cities, the country seems ready to roll over and go to bed for a long spell.

As it appears, there is some evidence that gunmen with notional attachments to the PNP have been teaming up with those in the forefront; various spokespersons in the PNP have been calling for an islandwide state of emergency. Meanwhile, the information minister has dismissed the idea that the prime minister has formally requested the Americans to send in the Marines.

What happens if Dudus stays

OK, before you start to conclude that I am a purveyor of fear and that I am selling it in support of the JLP administration’s refusal to sign the extradition order for Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, boss of all bosses in West Kingston, let me simply state that I was merely attempting to give you my best version of likely happenings based on how the grand game of politics, in the last 50 years, has meshed with the street elements in order to ensure that the JLP and PNP tribes can remain in their parasitic relationship with the people of this country.

A well-known, highly successful businessman who is a friend, wrote recently, “What if I said that the feeling I get, outside of the partisan biases, is that the greatest fear among the citizenry has to do with a feeling that Dudus brings a sense of stability and that this would change to anarchy were he removed… A fear of the perceived awesome firepower in the hands of men incapable of reason and seeking only individual power, in the many islandwide communities that are under the sphere of influence of Tivoli — The Mother of all Garrisons, according to former Commissioner Hardley Lewin — bearing in mind the alleged superior firepower and the many in the police force who were schooled and placed there deliberately by dons.”

The PNP when it was in power never failed to provoke Tivoli Gardens into violent outbursts when it suited them to do so. I am not saying that the gunmen in Tivoli Gardens were armed by the politicians because I have no evidence of this. Indeed, at this juncture of our sordid history where politicians have been neutered and the street elements attached to them no longer call them boss, the typical gunman in an inner-city community would probably balk at the idea that a politician gave him a gun.

Created by Eddie Seaga, Tivoli Gardens and the wider West Kingston constituency became the template for the PNP’s response to fighting fire with fire. As the PNP’s South St Andrew constituency became the first line of defence in hitting back at armed young men from Tivoli in the 1970s, the JLP ensured that Rema was well placed as a stub extending from its border with Denham Town a few blocks into South St Andrew.

Rema gunmen were the front-line warriors, ostensibly keeping the PNP horde from raiding further south and pushing Tivoli into the sea. When Rema behaved badly, its gunmen were always seen to be expendable. Just ask those old enough to recount the massacre carried out by Tivoli on Rema in 1984.

My friend added, for contextual support that, “This may very well be the opportunity to clean slate… but for this to be successful… superior, disciplined and coordinated intelligence and force would have to be applied from day one of any such initiative. The old truism ‘one can’t be half pregnant’ is appropriate here.”

He then asks a question which focuses on the ability of the state to summon the will to rescue its soul.

“Is Jamaica capable of this, when the target is a friend of those who must summon the political will, mobilise and coordinate this intelligence and force – having ostracised the most likely source of needed assistance? Some things are more easily said than done, and never lose sight of the fact that in Jamaica, the hierarchy is: Self, Party, then Country. This statesman thing is a mere chapter of our history not likely to be repeated.”

Question: Who is the ‘most likely source of the needed assistance’? No points for a correct answer.

From day one I had suggested that based on how the US extradition request had described the activities of Dudus, automatically his closest political allies would become his most feared enemies. But based on the information coming out of the JLP government, the US authorities must now go back and find some other grounds on which to make a new request.

Is the JLP government saying to the US government that it (the US) has breached that treaty? Let us appreciate that the JLP Cabinet has many members who are quick to give ‘respect’ to Dudus, therefore, as we know ‘fear’ follows ‘respect’.

To say to the US authorities, “Hell no, he won’t go” is to accept that if Mr Coke is as bad and influential as they say he is, then we in Jamaica ought to have known about it and done something about it. Essentially the Americans are saying, “Jamaica, you are incapable of running a viable country. You have accepted our money, our kindness. Now shut the @!/! up and abide by our treaty.”

The power of the Americans to cripple our tourist industry by issuing travel advisories is probably the worst action that could be taken, but seeing that we will need every cent of tourism earnings in order to pay back the IMF, it is my view that the Americans will not be doing this any time soon.

If the Americans suspect that the Dudus they have investigated has surrogates with American visas, revoking those visas could be a start. Don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way linking the revoking of Wayne Chen’s visa with the Dudus extradition request.

The fact is, if Jamaica fails to exercise what most Jamaicans see as the sensible option, the US authorities can bring into play many surreptitious options that only a CIA operative could conjure up.

It is my personal belief that any decision to extradite Dudus lies squarely in Tivoli Gardens. But it could be that the Government is playing two hands in the one game.

On one hand, it opens up publicly and defends the ‘sovereign rights of our citizens’ and earns the wrath of the citizenry. On the other hand, the possibility is that it could be holding covert meetings with the US authorities simply because it knows that whatever the US wants, the US gets.

One online commentator summed it up as follows, “The only party that holds any cards, aside from Dudus, is the USA. Bruce Golding is simply a noisy spectator. This situation has made it clear that the coup d’état took place many years ago. Dudus is the King of Jamaica!”

An ailing citrus industry needs help

In the late 1960s when I was in my teens, I worked as a statistical clerk at Port Services Ltd and as a claims clerk at United Fruit Company.

While I was at United Fruit Company, any look at an outgoing manifest on one of the weekly steamships would show thousands of packages of oranges and ortaniques being exported. Those days are long gone.

The citrus industry, it would seem, has not yet caught up with the realities of the earth being one global village with everything tradable across all borders.

Estimates are that in 2009 Jamaica imported about US$2.5 million worth of frozen orange concentrate, which represented about 40 per cent of local demand. All this while local citrus processors find themselves in the unenviable position of having excess stock because of the eroding of market share caused by the imports.

In the larger scheme of things, it is entrepreneurial drive and skilled marketing which will sell a good product. But at the micro level, in the citrus industry we have farmers ‘selling’ their fruit for concentrate to the processors, but because of the overstock and the imports, the farmers cannot get paid.

Most of the concentrate is sold to the juice brands in Jamaica and, faced with the overseas competition, the local processors are forever in a bind. In the rural areas, the OJ industry is a boon to many farm workers who have no idea about the global supply chain, globalisation and dumping.

All they know is that those rural communities are coming to a standstill as the frozen orange concentrate remains frozen in stores.

Can Minister Christopher Tufton and his ‘three wise men’ suggest ways to assist the dying citrus industry while rescuing many of the poor rural communities involved?

They are waiting on you for answers, minister.

Threatening me with God

He calls himself a preacher and chided me because he is a believer and I am not. He wants me to be ‘with God’ and if I am not with God, he wishes me worse than bodily harm.

“Mark Wignall, you have seen now that there is truly a true God that exists,” said the man. “You refused to accept Him. You used His power to fulfil your glory. I am now going to show you proof that there is a true God who exists. I am now going to ask the true God with authority He gave me that through His name, JESUS CHRIST, I am going to ask Him to remove His power from you until you willingly acknowledge that there is a God who exists. Once you acknowledge that He exists, I will ask Him to return that power to you. This now depends on you if you want to receive again the power that was given from birth by God who you did not see.

“Once you fail to acknowledge Him, then you will always from now on remain without His power. Once you decide to acknowledge Him, you can get back in touch with us and we will ask Him, JESUS CHRIST, to return the power to you.”

How charitable that He would return the power to me, once it was removed.

Another wrote, “I have read your columns for a few years and I have found that they are marked by three things: your basic understanding of politics; your schoolboy fascination with sex; and your professed atheism. The first two are real – you do have, as they say, your ‘ear to the ground’ about Jamaican politics; and you nurse an adolescent delight with sex.

“The latter — your professed atheism — is a sham, and I say this with authority as a minister of religion, and one who has read a bit of philosophy. Your professed atheism is nothing more than a pseudo-intellectual façade. You erected it to hide behind to practise immorality…”

With despotic preachers like these, I am forced to ask, who listens to these people? What really scares me is that their ‘flock’ often leave the places of worship feeling ‘blessed’.

Blessed or blissfully confused?

observemark@gmail.com