Dear Editor,

The passing of Wilmot Perkins leaves a gaping hole in quality journalism, public education, and informed fearlessness in matters of public concern. He will be missed – even by those who found him feisty and intolerant.

If justice necessarily implies application of moral principles in settling or determining that which is fair, then indifference to injustice is no less immoral than commission of it. Immorality is the antithesis of honour.

Injustice to anyone anywhere is therefore an outrage to him who would be honourable. The honour of such outrage requires no accolade, but a corrective; because justice is normative of honour, as outrage in denial of it is natural to the honourable.

He who expends time and resource in defence of family and friend is not without honour, but such is the inducement or persuasion of emotional and social proximity which integrates the matrix of relations. In any event, to spend one moment in defence of the undefended or the defenceless, with no other consideration but fairness or assurance, is the justice of honour, and to do so with jeopardy to self is a refining of the meaning of hero.

Mr Perkins has been heroic. For the five decades of Jamaica’s Independence, he stood, sometimes with others, at other times alone, against the kind of political activism that sprang from leadership unsteady with the new wine of sovereign power and somewhat forgetful of the rule of law.

Lloyd Perkins

corpcollablaw@cwjamaica.com