JLP councillor challenges Bunting on Tivoli Gardens issue
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) councillor, Duane Smith, has challenged the Opposition’s national security spokesperson, Peter Bunting, to produce evidence that former Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke was tipped off by the party about the United States authorities’ request for his extradition in 2009.
Smith, who was speaking at Sunday’s monthly meeting of the JLP’s Area Council One at the Boy Scouts headquarters, Arnold Road, Kingston, accused Bunting of showing neither sympathy with the 69 people who died as a result of the security forces’ operation to capture Coke in 2010, nor empathy for the residents who are still living with the trauma of the experience.
“He did not even find it in him to show some empathy with the children who suffered the traumatic experience,” Smith told the meeting of the JLP Council which covers all constituencies in the Corporate Area.
He said that, instead, Bunting has consistently made the claim of a “tip off” without providing any facts to dispute the statement by the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry that it found “no evidence of any direct communication between Christopher “Dudus” Coke and any Government official between August 2009 and May 2010”.
Smith also accused Bunting of using the issue as the basis of his campaign to seek the leadership of the People’s National Party (PNP).
He said that since Bunting announced his intention to vie for leadership of the PNP, in advancing his campaign, he has been travelling across Jamaica raising the same issues about “Dudus” and the government, and not a word about the civilians who were either traumatised, injured, maimed, or killed during the operation.
“Is that the kind of person who should be supported to become the leader of a major political party, or prime minister of Jamaica? A man who puts his own personal ambitions above the right to life of men, women and children living in poverty who are subject to violence from gangsters as well as their own security forces?” Smith asked.
“I would hate to live in a Jamaica with a leader like Bunting with no compassion for the poor, or even their children,” he added.
Balford Henry