According to Colonel Rocky Meade, head of communications at the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), the country needs a State of Emergency in order to deal with the run-away crime rate.

Why then, don’t we have one?

As far as we understand the issue, the option to approach the governor-general under section 26 of our Constitution is still open to the Government. Indeed, the Government has a duty to engage all legitimate means to secure the country’s well-being.

So given the many pronouncements by the Government about its resolve to deal with the crime problem, we expect to hear more about its plan to go forward.

We expect to hear whether another State of Emergency is to be declared or not, and why.

For we don’t take lightly Col Meade’s words to the recent Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) president’s forum at the Sunset Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios.

As head of the JDF’s communications, his utterances about the critical need to deal with the crime problem now, must be taken as representative of the message that the organisation wants the country to hear.

More than seven days have elapsed since the State of Emergency ended last week. Since then the country has experienced several murders – including that of four people in Bog Walk, St Catherine, for which the cause remains undetermined, and a member of our security forces who was cut down in the line of duty in Haughton Grove, Hanover.

However, there is speculation that there may be a link between these murders and the collapsed State of Emergency.

If this really is the case, then surely we have a right to demand that the Government explain itself, especially in the face of reports that the criminal gangs which were displaced during the State of Emergency are regrouping.

Let’s face facts.

It is not inconceivable that the brazen May attacks by criminals on our security forces could be repeated in the event of a failure to do what is necessary to neutralise them.

The criminal elements that challenged the State in such a confident manner did not come into being overnight. Rather, as successive administrations literally slept in the various beds of corruption built up through years of facilitating slackness and ineptitude, they armed themselves in preparation to challenge any move to trespass on their turf.

To think that these elements will just fade away after a few weeks of pressure is sheer folly.

Like the illness to which Col Meade likened the country’s crime problem, the criminal elements will fester and take us over unless they are eradicated through the sustained application of pressure.

Nothing less will do.