Despite the lukewarm and churlish response from Derrick Smith, the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party’s spokesman on national security, to reports of significant reductions in major crimes, Jamaicans should celebrate this accomplishment even as they encourage their Government to redouble its efforts in the fight against crime and violence. Unquestionably, crime-fighting is not the sole remit of government; it requires the involvement of the entire citizenry because information is vital in helping the police to solve crime.

Data show that, from January to December 31, 2014, all serious and violent crimes, including murder, rape, shooting, and aggravated assault fell 17 per cent when compared with the corresponding period in 2013. There was a 16 per cent reduction in murders, moving from 1,200 in 2013 to 1,005 in 2014. While this is good, neither the Government nor the police can simply “rest on their laurels”. They cannot pat themselves on the back ad infinitum or declare mission accomplished, because, as they know, criminality is quite ephemeral.

That notwithstanding, journalist Ian Boyne, in an excellent piece titled ‘Peter Bunting: Game changer of 2014’, presciently expressed the likelihood of some nascent charlatans pouring cold water on Bunting’s successes.

It was unsurprising, but embarrassingly awful, therefore, for Derrick Smith, a man who once held the national security portfolio, to display such intellectual biliousness and spiteful unwillingness to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. He could not simply bring himself to congratulate Minister Bunting, the Government or the security forces ungrudgingly on this signal achievement. Instead, he circuitously attempted to pluck things out of thin air with the view to diminish the obvious value of Jamaica achieving a lower crime rate because it is happening under a PNP Government.

Derrick Smith is so darn passé in his political orientation that celebrating a national success appears too demanding of his time and energy. It is funny as hell how politicians easily forget history. They do so with the hope that others will just follow suit without bothering to remind them of their inglorious past. It was only a little under seven years ago, in 2008, that Prime Minister Bruce Golding replaced Smith with Colonel Trevor Macmillan as national security minister. There was nothing coincidental about Smith’s swift and untidy removal — coming as it did at the end of a 12-day period that saw at least 75 murders.

It was brutally ironic then that Smith’s removal occurred while he was at home preparing his presentation for the Sectoral Debate as minister. Smith knows very well the degree of difficulty involved in managing the national security portfolio. Yet, his resentment for his political opponent makes me wonder if, even at this late stage of his political life, he would not benefit from acceding to Nelson Mandela’s advice on the evil of resentment when he said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

No country our size can realise its full potential with this level of crime and murders. Therefore, the work must begin anew until every old woman, old man, child, and the entire society can safely traverse the length and breadth of Jamaica without unreasonable fear of being raped, robbed, maimed, or murdered. Yet, reducing crime will take more than increased budgetary allocation — important though that is. Crime fighting is a national endeavour that requires active citizen participation.

Moreover, reducing crime goes beyond these general platitudes. People are more inclined to commit crimes when their social circumstances are less than desirable and when their personal economies bar them from acquiring the basic things in life, such as food, clothing and shelter. It is hard to tell a man, who is otherwise very ambitious, not to tear down Maas Joe’s shop when ‘white squall’ keeping crusade at his ‘jaw corners’ and there is nothing productive for him to do because jobs are unavailable and hope is lost.

A recent series of opinion polls confirm this observation. When Anderson’s team asked Jamaicans: What do you see as the main cause of crime? Seventy-two per cent said, “The economy’s forcing people to crime…” This is most telling and the Government had better wake up to the reality that “it is the economy, stupid”, to quote Bill Clinton.

No one with even a modicum of common sense or conscience can deny that times are hard. Times are hard for a majority of Jamaicans, and they have been hard for a long, long time. The same TVJ/RJR Don Anderson polls asked participants to identify the main reasons for the hard times: 46 per cent said, “Corruption over the years”; 42 per cent said “poor management of the economy by the PNP”; and 29 per cent said “poor management of the economy by the JLP”. Other respondents identified “too much importation, devaluation, harsh IMF terms, and global conditions” as reasons for the hard times.

Undoubtedly, 2015 will mark the official start to the 2016 General Election campaign, but woe unto them who cannot show tangible economic advancements as measured by increased private-sector-led job growth. Woe unto them who cannot deliver lower energy costs sufficient to increase discretionary incomes or get the levers of production cranking again. For, while the economic fundamentals are encouraging and some growth has returned, these, in and by themselves, are insufficient. Until the man on the street begins to feel a sense of prosperity and reward for the sacrifices made, the 2016 event may turn out for the governing PNP as 2011 ended for the JLP.

Let the communications begin in earnest. This is dissimilar to a call for propagandising. By communications, I am speaking to the political directorate, particularly the prime minister, to begin to level with and sell Government’s economic programmes to the people in ways they understand and from which they can benefit. The commander-in-chief cannot expect to go through 2015 the same way she has been operating since taking office. Her non-communicative, ceremonialist style of leadership will not cut it in 2015, not with tough wage negotiations, social tensions, and hardship happening simultaneously.

For whatever reasons, we are not hearing much about the logistics hub these days. It could very well be that plans are well advanced and things are hunky-dory. However, one has to wonder if the hub is not just hobbling to suffer sudden death in the pipeline of dreams. We hope not, for the sake of the thousands of Jamaicans who are praying that it does not end up big and beautiful in conceptual design, but seemingly comatose and unbankable. There has to be something that can be done in the interim, without offending IMF conditionalities, to spur economic growth. Because it is becoming harder to comfort people when they, rightly, feel that, while the “grass is growing” for a few, the majority of “the horses are starving”.

Burnscg@aol.com

Derrick Smith.jpg

SMITH… could not simply bring himself to congratulate Minister Bunting, the Government or the security forces ungrudgingly