It is extraordinarily painful to watch as the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) do what they are best at — fiddle while Rome burns in respect of crime.

The prime minister will pardon us if we refuse to be impressed with his histrionics over the PNP’s decision not to support the extension of the states of public emergency (SOE) in both the House and Senate last week.

The country knows from 2010 that the PNP has been against SOEs, albeit on some dubious constitutional grounds. Indeed, they have sued in defence of their position and won, forcing the Government to backtrack. The Government is well aware of that and the prime minister’s dramatics — talented as he seems to be at it — changes nothing.

We have seen no evidence that the party has changed its mind and is willing to reverse course. The prime minister’s attempt to embarrass the PNP is therefore little more than political one-upmanship as he auditions for a third term in office.

But the PNP is in an even darker place. The impression being given by the party is that it prefers to be right on small points, even if many more people end up dead by removing the SOEs. Better to be dead right than have the SOE.

It may be worse yet.

We suspect that the PNP’s position on the SOE is the position of Mr Peter Bunting, who is pulling the strings while Mr Mark Golding fronts the leadership. Recall that Mr Bunting had hounded out Dr Peter Phillips only to find the party leadership snatched from his outstretched hands after he lost the Manchester Central constituency in the 2020 General Election by the little-known Ms Rhoda Crawford.

Mr Bunting seems to have no interest in reaching any agreement with the Government which dismantled his signature Citizen Security and Justice Programme that he proudly promoted during his time as national security minister.

Moreover, he has not forgotten Mr Andrew Holness’s 2015 declaration that, if people voted for his JLP they could sleep with their windows and doors open. The people did vote out the PNP and have kept it in the political wilderness since then.

The tragedy in all of this playing around with crime is that both parties know that no single Government can effectively bring crime under control. But they are unwilling to try what is probably the only viable thing left — locking arms with the people against the criminals and murderers, in particular.

With all anti-crime programmes and squads having failed over the years, the political parties should create the joint leadership that will weaponise the eyes and ears of the citizenry against the violence producers. No country has ever kept crime under wraps without the citizens being on board in every community and every nook and cranny.

The Vale Royal Consensus on Crime that was spearheaded by the private sector, civil society, the churches, and non-governmental organisations seemed, for a time, to be the way forward. However, the Government and Opposition appear to have no stomach for it.

We still believe that the two parties meeting behind closed doors with the necessary resource personnel can hammer out an agreement to tackle crime together, if they can first put the country’s interest over their parties.

They just have to be persuaded that Jamaicans are worth it.