PRESIDENT of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Howard Mitchell has made public the organisation’s position on the prime minister’s appointment of Justice Bryan Sykes as acting chief justice, indicating that it is “impractical”.

Speaking at a Rotary Club of St Andrew luncheon Tuesday at Hotel Four Seasons, Mitchell said his organisation had penned a letter to the Prime Minister Andrew Holness on the matter, but its position is that neither Holness nor his office has the capacity to assess the performance of a jurist.

“Tying the chief justice’s hands behind him and throwing him into the dark end of the pool and saying, ‘Well, perform’, is impractical. We have not gone into the issues of the separate arms and the independence of the judiciary, but it is my guess from the many qualified and expert legal opinions that the action was wrong.

“Everybody can make a mistake; the test of a man is the correction of the wrong,” he said.

Mitchell also used the opportunity to reiterate that, in relation to public order and the control and management of citizens’ security, the country is on its way to becoming a failed State.

Last month Mitchell called on the Government to undertake a research-guided approach to dealing with crimes across the island while speaking at the launch of The University of the West Indies’ Research Days.

In his address Tuesday, he said although he took a lot of flak for last month’s comments, he maintains the position.

He said: “The definition of a failed State is when the organisations of the State, the apparatus of the state, is unable to deliver the services to its citizens that are incumbent or a part of a functioning society. I am sounding a warning that in relation to public order and to the control and management of our citizens’ security, the state is failing.

“There is a proportion of the State’s responsibilities which are not being carried out. Maybe those here assembled do not have personal experience of that part, but I have, and in addition to that, a part of public order and citizen security is the ability to allow people the opportunity to have proper housing, proper utility services and proper hygiene. We have failed in that regard,” Mitchell said.

The PSOJ president said, as citizens, “it is our responsibility to maintain standards and hold those who work for us, those who we have elected and those who we have nominated, to those standards”.

Mitchell also urged Jamaicans not to wait until an election to express their dissatisfaction with matters.

“We need to speak out, take every opportunity to speak out. There are two things that politicians are afraid of — one is that the international partners will withdraw their funds and the other is public opinion. They do not like to be called out. They don’t want to feel that their control, their influence, their reach is slipping away, and that’s our job,” he said. “Let us each write the letters, call the talk shows; when you see the politicians tell them you are not happy with the management and public order. Tell them straight up, ‘Wonderful achievement, Mr Shaw, but I need to drive on the road without harassment’. Tell them that because that is the only way that you will get through to their psyche.”

Meanwhile, Mitchell said the PSOJ has the right to constructively criticise and comment on behalf of its members, constituent employees and stakeholders as to the direction in which the country is being taken by the political directorate on both sides. As a result, he stated that he makes no apology for stridently speaking out against the neglect, lack of vision and the absolute incompetence of some of the agents of the State.

“Also, I make no apology for criticising ourselves for allowing these conditions to continue and become endemic and institutionalised over several decades. The business of public order and city security is primarily that of the State, but we are the ones who are to hold the State to the books. There is a social construct in a democratic environment which says we elect people to be the agents of our common will, to be our servants, and it seems we have forgotten that we need to evaluate and we need to criticise and we need to direct our agents,” Mitchell said.

“It is time that we understand that unless we demand our space in the room as citizens, as law-abiding citizens, tax-paying, hard-working citizens, demand the right to be consulted, to be informed, then we deserve whatever we get and we can’t complain,” he said.