Dear Editor,

Politics and politicians wear an indelible, irreducible, irremovable stain of corruption worldwide, any and every politician is deemed likely to engage in back door deals, to take money under the table for services rendered; and, be trying to get a huge cut of taxpayer funds and pocket them.

Jamaican politicians have another even greater liability. Many of them represent and are connected to criminal garrisons which bear this definition.

Currently there are 18 known political garrisons throughout Jamaica. A garrison, as many already know, is an area in which criminal and political activity are tightly controlled by politically affiliated gang eaders. Historically, the political party that happened to be in power would use large-scale public housing projects to reward and geographically concentrate their supporters in garrison communities.

Violent, politically affiliated criminal gangs would then enforce the political homogeneity of the garrison in exchange for a measure of exemption from law and order. At various points in Jamaica’s history both of the major political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP) have created new housing projects that have turned into garrisons. Several seats in Parliament are now virtually guaranteed for each party by the garrisons they control.

As recent events have amply and incontrovertibly demonstrated, the Jamaican nation has lost control of powerful citizens within these enclaves. It required outside intervention to bring ‘Dudus’ to justice at great cost of life and resulted in the destruction of the credibility and capacity to govern of the prime minister of Jamaica; and, democracy cannot overcome this problem because the current leader of the opposition herself represents a garrison and if elected it might only be a matter of time before she finds herself in a similar predicament, choosing between protecting a powerful constituent and the national interest.

Other Cabinet ministers and potential Cabinet ministers, depending of who wins the next round of elections, are in the same predicament.

Indeed, only an individual who lives in the Jamaican Diaspora could dare to take a stand against this cancer spreading in the Jamaican body politic which may have already metastasised and may already be at the point where it is producing a terminal illness in the nation.

I have called and renew my call for the resignation of all individuals who represent garrisons for the common good and in the national interest, the necessary prerequisite to the dismantling of the garrisons and the relocation of occupants of these communities to other communities based on the national motto ‘Out of Many, One People’.

I say the Jamaican nation is between the proverbial rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue sea. Dismantling these garrisons may be hardest thing that the Jamaican people could attempt, but this can only become more and more difficult as more and more constituencies fall under the sway of this absolute evil.

Garrison politics is having other effects on Jamaican life, the rate of crime and the number of murders produced by this form of social organisation must be a major disincentive to investment, both large and small.

Every business along Spanish Town Road in the environs of Tivoli Gardens has long had to pay protection money to operate, soon that will spread over the entire nation; and, in the not-too-distant future enterprises, small and large serving tourists may find themselves gresing the palm of the nearest ‘don’ to operate.

Making an exception for posse members before the law must have a destructive impact on the integrity and operation of members of the security forces who out of frustration at their palpable incapacity to do their jobs, resort to vigilante tactics themselves and become judge, jury and executioner of citizens; and becoming accustomed to this on the job this habit causes them to apply this standard of justice, for example, to lovers of their spouses or any particularly irritating individual.

And then there is the matter of the quality of life of residents in these enclaves where women must endure rape and if a ‘don’ or any ranking posse member develops a liking for a teenager she must satisfy his carnal lust.

What I am describing is Jamaica’s future if citizens do not take the opportunity to rise up and change this future; and, there is no doubt there is strong element of risk in forcing the resignation of all politicians representing garrisons, there is serious risk in dismantling the garrisons but we have no choice but to take this risk because it can only get greater and greater.

We stand at one of the crossroads in the history of our nation, one road leads to the destruction of law and order and of the Jamaican way of life; the other leads to the restoration of law and order and the preservation of the Jamaican way of life.

William E Virtue

2330 NW 72nd Ave, C207

Sunrise, FL 33313