http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20050417/focus/focus3.html
Published: Sunday | April 17, 2005

LIKE MANY Jamaicans, I had high hopes for Bruce Golding. I have grown thoroughly sick of the aggressively confrontational, name-calling nonsense that goes by the name of politics in this country.

And, for 10 years, Mr. 'New and Different' has been assuring us that though he used to be part of the 'old-time politricks', if we gave him the chance he would put an end to irresponsible posturing and guttersniping by taking the high road and, thus forcing his opponents to do the same.

Well, the man could not even wait to become official opposition leader to break his word. His 'Nazi concentration camp' and 'bangarang' comments about the police round-ups in Spanish Town were the dumbest things I have heard a local politician say since Omar Davis boasted that "We going to run with it comrades!"

THREAT OF BANGARANG

How could any sane person compare death camps that exterminated six million people with a temporary holding centre for suspected criminals?

Unless he does some very quick damage control, Mr. Golding's 'Nazi camp bangarang' comments may well come to haunt him as badly as 'I voted for it before I voted against it' did John Kerry in last year's United States presidential campaign.

I liken Mr. Golding to a cricket batsman who did well at the Carib Cup level and got selected to play Test cricket, but then had his middle stump uprooted by the first delivery after playing a careless shot. Luckily for him, politics has many second innings. So, he will have a chance to redeem himself. But, he better come a lot better next time, or the electorate will quickly decide that 'Cho, him no ready fe lead we!'

Personally, I think that apart from being politically foolish, Mr. Golding's statements made him seem like a bleeding heart wimp. Spanish Town probably has the highest murder rate of any city on earth, and it is increasingly clear that if the government does not do something, it is going to descend into complete anarchy. Most of Jamaica was overjoyed at the round-up and curfew. Yes, some innocent people were undoubtedly taken in with hardened criminals but, considering Jamaica's homicide level, we can no longer afford ultra liberal niceties.

DRASTIC MEASURES NEEDED

Whether it is incipient old age or our inexorably increasing murder levels, I am much more willing these days to accept that we will have to break eggs to make any crime-solving omelette. Certainly, I am not - at least not yet - a 'leggo Renato pon dem' vigilante death squad advocate. If the rule of law is lost, then all is lost. But, we definitely need much tougher laws. I do not see why we cannot do what the U.S. did to solve its crime problem, namely, bring in 'three strikes you're out laws' and build more prisons to hold the extra criminals they will produce. If the good ol' U.S.A. can do it, why not Jamaica?

I don't know what to make of Spanish Town. In most places, where you have a guerilla war -; and the death rates in the old capital puts that of places like Nepal and Palestine, where supposed revolts are taking place, to shame - the combatants, at least, articulate some cause. But, no one seems to know what the people in Spanish Town are killing each other over. Surely, it cannot only be politics, because what has the PNP or JLP ever done for these people that makes it worth dying for orange or green? Most of them still live in miserable poverty.

Indeed, turning on their party leaders who have fed them a stream of lies for so many years their actions, though no more justifiable, might make sense. But, on the police reports, all we hear are the vague terms 'gang-related' or 'reprisal'.

I have long been convinced that the number-one reason for Jamaica's stratospheric murder rate is our lack of family structure. The vast majority of our young men who murder and are murdered never grew up with a father and their only concept of manhood is brute force. Theirs is the law of the jungle - only the strong survive - and they value neither their lives nor anyone else's.

WHERE WILL IT END?

But, when I mention the fatherlessness problem to anyone, I usually get accused of classism and racism. The fact that we have an 85 per cent out-of-wedlock birthrate seems to bother no one, even though every study ever done highlights fatherlessness as one of the main indicators of crime. Everyone here seems to think it is just a coincidence that Jamaica has both the highest out-of-wedlock birthrate in the world and the highest homicide rate in the world.

I love Jamaica and have never thought about leaving ever since I came back here to live in 1989 after studying in Canada, but I have watched the murder toll go from 414 to 500 to 750 to 1,000 to 1,500 and now it is on track to end up near 2,000. I keep wondering where will it all end.

Whenever I go abroad, I revel in the freedom I have to walk about in safety and, lately, I have been wondering to myself if I really would want my children to grow up in a country where you are only feel safe in a building or in a car ­ all of which depresses me to no end. How could we Jamaicans manage to turn such an incomparably beautiful country into the war zone it seems on the verge of becoming?

As if things are not bad enough, oil prices keep soaring to record heights. One measure that would lessen the impact here is Daylight Saving Time (DST) during the spring and summer months a la the U.S. The extra hour of sunlight will mean less energy used and hence less oil imports. DST was implemented in the 1970s and then scrapped because of political pressure. But, it certainly makes economic sense now for a country which imports every gallon of fuel it uses.