Dear Editor,

“…I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, and from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting…” – Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII.

The country is paying a dreadful price for its long-standing reluctance to hold its leaders accountable for their actions. This failure has permitted both political parties to maintain close links to these militias and their warlords for decades, not needing to even care whether we knew or not. It has also bred into them a breathtaking, but not entirely undeserved, contempt for the citizens whose votes they periodically sought. It worked for them.

Now, for the first time at last, a ruling political party is being held to account for its stewardship. This must be our practice from here on. Never again must a government of Jamaica subvert the public interest without facing the most dire consequences. A government that betrays the public trust should not continue to govern. The ordinary citizen must accept blame for abandoning the country’s affairs to people who were not prepared to hold that trust in honour. This, more than anything else, has permitted the growth and metastasis of the cancer that is now costing the country so much to excise.

We all knew, but cared little about the incestuous relationship between organised crime and politics. How can we escape guilt for winking at this dishonouring of our constitution in which parties traded protection of criminals for votes? This is the logic of the putrid underbelly of our politics. Do we now see why criminals have got so powerful that they can openly challenge the state? Do we believe the firepower and brazenness criminals display were acquired yesterday? Corruption runs deep and high, and we now see why it required an external agency to set the process of exposing it in motion.

All is not lost. We can yet recover our country. Whichever party forms the government must know that it holds a temporary stewardship of our affairs. Jamaica is not its private preserve to do with as it pleases. To contend that there is no alternative because the other party is the same is only partly true. That reality imposes a greater requirement on us to be vigilant, lest the same thing happen again. We don’t want that, do we? We now know how to work with what we have.

Michael Nicholson

PO Box 5171

Kingston 6