Justice Minister Mr Delroy Chuck is, if nothing else, exasperating.

He is sometimes the bright, articulate and intellectually sharp Rhodes scholar we expect him to be, and at other times not.

What in tarnation could have led Mr Chuck to believe that he could hoodwink the population into thinking that he is only an ordinary man who can do nothing about what he alleges to be money-laundering housing developers putting up ill-conceived high-rise apartments that rob single-family homes of their privacy?

Mr Chuck is the subject of ridicule on social media after reports that he complained to the Jamaica Urban Developers Association about unscrupulous developers who build structures without regard for long-suffering homeowners, while developers who follow the rules “get shafted by long delays and obvious frustration”.

“[T]here are far too many developers, especially those who are seeking to launder ill-gotten gains, or to make some quick money from ill-conceived developments, who are making residential and neighbourly living inconvenient and an unholy mess of perennial dust, heavy equipment disturbance, and road disrepair,” he is reported as saying.

Said Mr Chuck: “In truth, residents are extremely annoyed, angry, and amazed when, without notice or warning, and most times without knowledge of any amendment to, or application to amend, the restrictive covenants, multi-family developments simply spurt up totally unannounced.”

As minister of justice, and if he is so infuriated by such obviously illegal acts, one expects Mr Chuck to be leading the charge to get the responsible people in his Government to go all out after the culprits, not to be whining and whimpering about it.

It’s the game politicians love to play. They hope that by seemingly identifying verbally with the suffering victims citizens would be foolish enough to believe they are looking out for their interest, when it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It was only a little over a year ago that Mayor of Kingston Senator Delroy Williams and his Trafalgar Division Councillor Kari Douglas came out swinging against plans to build the capital city’s tallest high-rise building, the Ascent, in New Kingston.

Ms Douglas, the deputy chair of the Building and Town Planning Committee of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, suggested that the disapproval was mostly linked to the Town and Country Planning Provisional Development Order, 2017, which needed to be reviewed, amended, and upgraded.

Mayor Williams, at the same time, had been taking on the tough task of cleaning up and modernising the messy and often-corrupt building approval process, no doubt helped by politicians themselves.

He demanded that the Building and Town Planning Committee kept written, detailed documentation of all material considerations, and reasons for decisions taken in the approval process for each building application.

If the instructions are followed through, the building committee will henceforth have to document all planning issues, such as amenities and safety, traffic, zoning, planning history, history of enforcement, appeal history, resolution of enforcement objections, relevant plans and policies, and statutory policy guidelines, among other sore points.

Indeed, a promise is a comfort to a fool.