As I continue to listen to evidence coming out of the Tivoli Enquiry, and especially that from former Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington, I am convinced that the security forces had no other option but to storm into the barricaded community in May 2010.

When I recall the conversations I had with people either inside Tivoli Gardens or those closely connected with the political side of that “state within a state”, the knowledge that it had amassed a formidable arsenal of weaponry over the last 14 years and the raw power wielded by ‘The President’, one may not have thought that the structure would have been dismantled in such violent fashion but, for the good of the country, it had to go.

So many on both sides of the political fence had taken Tivoli Gardens for granted, meaning that it was a mainstay of political power for the JLP, more than an irritant for the PNP every five years as it exported violence all over the island and, to the residents of Tivoli Gardens themselves, it was that black cloak of fear which rendered them either robotic or silent when they pretended they did not see what was happening.

By his eloquent testimony, Commissioner Ellington has allowed us to see Tivoli Gardens for what it was – a lawless state accepted by everyone in the JLP as its perennially embarrassing political status quo. As it grew from mere appendage of the political system to genuine power broker across the political landscape, some of the more enterprising ones in PNP-dominated communities saw reason to ‘do business’ with ‘Dudus’ as his power reached skywards.

Much of what is coming out in testimony now matches with what I heard at the time — that Dudus had communicated information through others to the then Prime Minister Bruce Golding, but the tenor of the message was not exactly that of an invitation to a Sunday afternoon picnic at Hope Gardens.

Golding may have even seen himself as a bigger sacrificial lamb than many of us were making him out to be. Without making excuses for him, maybe all his fancy footwork through Manatt and the drawn-out extradition were simply body lotion to smooth down the don and lead him to a calmer place when the inevitable was already decided.

Bishop Herro Blair has spoken about a huge array of rifles seen in Tivoli Gardens, in apparent readiness for the raid by the security forces. I accept that as fact.

At some stage between the request for extradition and his capture, however, Dudus’s main concern as he saw time running out on him was a security forces operation which came directly for him and he would only be in the presence of his cronies. To him, that would spell death for himself.

Seeing life in any state as infinitely better than an unknown, but certain death, he must have been overjoyed to know that at the moment of his capture the attention of every Jamaican was on him, so to speak. Should any member of the security forces decide that that time would be perfect for a happy trigger finger, that person would have had to rethink, recalibrate, and simply ensure that the man was delivered alive and well.

Commissioner Ellington has done a lot to defuse the fears of those who believe that the security forces went on a murderous rampage inside Tivoli Gardens in May 2010. As I’ve written before, I have visited Tivoli Gardens on numerous occasions and, with a community of densely packed high rises, it is a veritable minefield in policing, especially if gunmen are firing from some of those apartments.

Those who have written about Tivoli Gardens, like its architect former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, may have chosen to give the history of Tivoli Gardens his own paternalistic tinge. But I am certain another story exists which has more congruence with the unvarnished truth.

Desmond McKenzie, the MP for Kingston Western, which encompasses Tivoli Gardens, also has a book inside him, but he cannot write it now because of the obvious. He would have to go back to Tivoli Gardens the day after the book was published and he would have concerns about his safety.

One of the fears that some in the PNP had with the awesome power that Dudus had taken unto himself, but which was also given to him by politicians who knew the power of his militia and others across the political spectrum who were prepared to bow in homage to him, was that he had amassed so much power that he could dictate the party political direction of PNP garrisons.

At the same time, if it suited him, he could twist the vote in a safe JLP garrison to register a win for the PNP. At that stage, he had become the most powerful man on Jamaican soil.

As far back as the late 1990s and into the early 2000s I had heard of young men from Tivoli Gardens getting US visas and travelling to ‘gun farms’ in the south to hone their skills. Those skills were well needed, as it was the politically correct view to hold that all the other PNP areas were heavily armed and Tivoli had to be a ‘little Israel’ in a sea of hostile states.

I cannot say that when the security forces entered Tivoli Gardens on May 24, 2010, every soldier and policeman was going to see it as a cakewalk. They had to have been very wary that at any time shots could ring out from high rises and take them out. For that reason, it is going to be nigh on impossible to determine through the commission of enquiry if they acted extrajudicially after the community had been made secure from gunmen.

The heart of many stories written, indeed, the meat of history is usually filled with important truths that never get written. I believe that the Tivoli saga is a perfect example of that.

I believe that Golding sacrificed himself and made his Administration a one-term government either by omission or commission. If he followed bad advice in the Dudus extradition then it led to his political demise. If he knew exactly what he was doing, and knew that it would end in his political demise, then maybe he took one on the chin for the greater good of the country.

Am I not allowed to dream?

observemark@gmail.com