If you watched the Monday, August 8 conversation between former prime minsters Bruce Golding and P J Patterson on Television Jamaica (TVJ), you would have noticed the mid-stream change when host Dionne Jackson Miller asked about the State’s failure to stop the murder flow?

The two were as sharp as cane-cutter machetes on the removal of The Queen as head of State and by extension the governor general, but bumbled their responses to this question. Bruce was rattled and less categorical. Uncharacteristically, he stumbled. He gave a policeman’s tale of community people not telling what they know, while Patterson harked back to his values and attitudes counter to Jamaican people’s growing “materialism”.

No one will dispute the truth of those realities. Far less acceptable, however, is the underlying message. Have you spotted it? It is to shift the blame for the murder rate from the leaders to the led, from the politicians to the people. No, no, no, Golding, Patterson, and Andrew Holness too! We are not accepting that ploy. The responsibility of the people is indisputable. But who has prime responsibility for crime and murder control? Why is there a Ministry of National Security?

And as for ‘kibbering yuh mout’ on which criminal did the killing, who led the way? How many criminal dons did the politicians shut their doors to? Whatever happened to that list of names that Edward Seaga is reputed to have drawn up for the police? That claim needed only, it seems, a brief message from Dudus. As for materialism — who parades up Duke Street in the biggest and shiniest SUVs on Parliament days? Who has the highest and broadest retaining wall in Jamaica holding up his splendid residence?

To handle rising murders, Patterson did a marvel. Unlike Michael Manley he didn’t go to the police, resort to force and a suppression of crimes law. He consulted Chief Justice Wolfe, academics, and civil society and he did this kind of combination three times – in 1992, 1996, and 2002– a commission and two national committees. The three came separately but arrived unanimously at identical conclusions: meaningfully raise the standard of living of crime-prone communities and reform the police. It is the same conclusion reached by the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry into the incursion in Tivoli Gardens in its 2016 report to the Holness Government.

Now I ask you: Which Administration in Jamaica’s 60 years has implemented this? Not even Patterson, after receiving the same story from his committees. Yes, they’ve fiddled with pieces of each, but have not done so comprehensively.

My call for opportunities for inner-city youth at the recent launch of Jamaica Fractured Nation Vibrant People was rejected by Golding in his conversation with Patterson. He cited the case of the failure of youth to make use of a fully equipped trade training unit set up in their community.

Golding hasn’t caught the true meaning of my call, however, and in truth, I have not adequately explained it. I was speaking of something much deeper and wider than a training centre — the treatment of an entire class of people by another class. More specifically, how those in the lower income strata, Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) people, those who queue for hours at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), and squatters are treated by the political class and those at a much higher income level. Do you think the different treatments are not noticed by those at the receiving end? I’m not asking for a levelling of all to the same living standards, only for some justice, some equality of the basics — security in food, medicine, housing, education, and work.

The recent fish kill in the Rio Cobre is a good example of what I mean. Year after year of the same thing, requiring serious protest to finally get change. Did it have to take so long? Who was responsible for the treatment of the community people? Were the people mainly responsible? Ronnie Thwaites referred recently (The Gleaner August 8, 2022) to the resolution he moved in Parliament in 2018 for a cost-benefit analysis of the bauxite industry. It was never considered for debate. The Jamaica Environment Trust has been making similar calls in the last two years.

So who is responsible for the continuous postponement of debate and action on critical issues? Is it the people or their leaders? Issues like traffic control, abortion, republic status, Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) – the list is long.

More probingly, why? This is really the question. Golding and Patterson recoiled and jointly stumbled over it. Recoiled because it turns the spotlight on them, on their class position and motives. On many issues the motive is readily apparent. The party in power won’t cross public opinion of one kind or another – a large number of churches, for instance, on the abortion issue. By so doing it thinks it could lose an election, lose power. Thus, public good is held back – for decades – for the sake of partisan benefit.

Underlying the motive for such partisan behaviour on these issues is that concern for the well-being of the lower class by the political class does not come up to the level of its concern for itself. For example, with regard to the issue of abortion, it is women and girls from low-income families, unable to afford a competent doctor, who will use harmful methods or bear children they did not want or plan for. In the case of the CCJ, it is the large majority who cannot afford to take their case to the Privy Council in England that will benefit.

So when a real choice has to be made, self-concern rules. How else can we explain politicians allowing people to be murdered in droves for decades when the two recommendations by the highest authorities have hardly been tried? Why is Holness not following the collective crime consensus path to murder control? Why the reluctance to partner with the People’s National Party, private sector, and civil society on the most urgent issue facing Jamaica? Is self-glorification that important?

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