Mr Norman Washington Manley, credited as the founder of the People’s National Party (PNP), father of the national movement for self-determination, and later to be named National Hero of Jamaica, lost a general election he had called purely on moral grounds.

After losing the Referendum on Jamaica’s membership in the West Indies Federation, he called early elections for 1961, believing that the people should have the right to decide which party would lead us into political independence. Again he lost, and ceded that great historical moment to the rival Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) led by Sir Alexander Bustamante. But the PNP was cemented in the minds and hearts of Jamaicans.

The PNP of today is but a shadow of that great party. It is entirely bereft of any moral bearings.

For the first time at last — to quote Mr Norman Manley’s son, Michael — Jamaica finally has a chance to right many of the things that are wrong with us, beginning with the opportunity to break the stranglehold that crime has had on our country for decades.

No one denies that crime has robbed us of many of the possibilities to be greater. As we cowered behind burglar bars that transformed our homes into virtual prisons, its stain on our international image brought us close to pariah status. Even tiny islands, such as Cayman and the Turks and Caicos, which we once administered, have now erected barriers to keep us away from their borders.

With murders climbing to 1,600 last year, Jamaican nationals staying away for fear of their own country, investors and tourists a mere trickle against the potential numbers, poverty flourished, as economic growth and development eluded us. That in turn fed the criminal network in a vicious circle.

Hard-working, law-abiding Jamaicans, most of whom can’t migrate, longed for the day of respite. When it finally came on May 23, with the State of Emergency, many of us also saw hope for a brighter tomorrow. A breathing space had been created by the sacrifice of our security forces empowered by the State of Emergency.

We have never in these editorials suggested anything but that Prime Minister Bruce Golding erred monumentally in his handling of the Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke extradition/Manatt affair, which led to the implosion in Tivoli Gardens. But out of adversity came a glorious opportunity to remove the crime cancer.

The process has begun. Surely, nobody believes that the dramatic drop in the murder rate is unrelated to the State of Emergency and the detentions.

Let us not fool ourselves. The majority of murders in this country have gone without conviction because eyewitnesses were afraid to testify against the killers.

The police often know the wrongdoers but cannot put them out of business without evidence that can stand up in a court of law, and no civilised society tolerates extra-judicial killings. The detentions allow the security forces to destabilise the criminals and throw them off balance, creating vital space.

What must happen now is implementation of a credible plan to permanently cripple the criminals and their network, which is obviously a medium-to long-term plan that needs all of us behind it.

We have that opportunity to begin. And it is that opportunity that the PNP is robbing us of, by putting party before country.

And they are doing it in the month of Mr Norman Manley’s birth.