Saturday, January 25, 2014

Deflecting the Blame

If ever there was a puny, sick, hypocritical attempt to deflect the blame for the appalling crime situation in Jamaica from the politicians, it was that presentation in parliament recently by Minister of Education Ronnie Thwaites, in which he labeled some schools as crime incubators.

For just about everyone knows that Jamaica being in the top five of the murder capitals of the world, is a direct result of the activities of some of the politicians themselves, no one else.

For it is the politicians who created the garrison constituencies which research has shown, has produced some 80% of the violent criminals who continue to haunt the country.

Oh yes, we in Jamaica  like to boast about our democratic traditions but we find it convenient to forget while talking about this  "democracy" to ignore the fact that some 25 % of the constituencies are garrisons or have large garrison segments where the people must vote as the dons, (gunmen supported and armed by some politicians) instruct them and in some garrisons, the people are even virtual slaves who must give the dons a portion of their earnings and send their children to them on demand, to satisfy the sexual pleasure of these well armed enforcers.

In the constituencies controlled by dons on behalf of some of the legislators sitting in parliament, a politician getting up to 120% of the vote in an election has not been considered unusual in Jamaica!

After establishing the tradition of garrison politics, mainly between the 70's and 80's, what we have today is the children and grandchildren of the original dons who were nurtured by some politicians,  growing up to become successful gun criminals in their own right and being the main perpetrators of the extreme violence in the country.

While listing the schools that Thwaites claimed statistics showed produced most of the criminals who were polled in prison, what he failed to tell the country was that most of  these schools were in the garrisons created by the politicians, so it is the environment that the kids were coming from that made them deviants, not the schools.

No attempt by Thwaites or any other politician to sanitise the role some of our leading politicians or deflect the blame from them {many of whom have been  hailed and deemed Most Honourable,) for making Jamaica one of the most murderous places on the planet, can succeed, for our memories are not that short!

1 comment:

Barry said...

Sunday's TVJ news started with PM of St Vincent, Ralph Gonsalves, talking for the legalisation of marijuana. He was polished and statesmanlike. The next item showed Andrew Holness talking about Jamaican police carrying body-worn cameras.

The difference between the two deliveries was like chalk and cheese.

Following Gonsalves, Holness appeared unpolished and unstatesmanlike and I don't think Portia would have been any better. Sad.