The Opportunity

The chickens have finally come to roost

For decades now, Jamaican politicians have nurtured gunmen and created garrison constituencies as this gives them the opportunity to get seats without having to campaign. This cancer has spread to some 20% 0f the country with the PNP having nine of the twelve garrison constituencies and the JLP three.

However, the Tivoli Gardens constituency has over the years definitely become what former commissioner of police Lewin called the "mother of all garrisons" thanks to the former prime minister and long time member of parliament Edward Seaga. Over the years, they have virtually removed themselves from Jamaican government institutions becoming a republic with whoever the don is being the president, minister of security and Robin Hood.

When the US government decided that they wanted the current don, Christoper Dudus Coke, his loyalists in Tivoli said no way. In fact they came out in their numbers on to the streets of Kingston, swearing to defend him to the death. The Jamaican state therefore had to go into the barricaded area for him or else join Somalia as a country divided up with sections run by warlords.

The assault on Tivoli started on Monday 24th May 2010, after terrorists there fired the first shots and set fire to a number of police stations, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency in certain affected areas.

We do not know what the outcome sill be, but the war is under way with the army joining in the assault against both Tivoli gunmen as well as gunmen from outside the area. Ironically many of these gunmen are loyal to the opposition PNP but have said they owe Dudus, since he had helped their warlord Zeekes,in the past.

So its now the state versus the armed criminals from both the PNP and JLP.

Hopefully, the security forces will soon prevail but it should not stop there. For when the Tivoli leg is over, the security forces should immediately be deployed into the other well armed garrisons to disarm all the thugs there who have been at the root of Jamaica's crime problem, capitulating us to the top, as the murder capital of the world.

As bad as things are today for the entire country, it gives us the perfect opportunity to deal with the problem once and for all.