Ronald Thwaites | Defending principles

It can't be good for any nation when its government habitually savages its own credibility while considering itself triumphant. Don't they think things through? Don't they listen to the cries of ordinary people?  Check the searing truth and distress in Michael Abrahams chant “People Bawling Under Tarpaulin”. 

THAT INTEGRITY REPORT

By now, most people have a deep suspicion, if not a settled conviction, that something is rotten in the Firearms Licensing Authority.  This is the agency which licenses weapons that kill. We need to be confident that those people have clean hands. But how?

Trying to squash the Integrity Commission's (IC’s) report by a spurious ‘sub judice’ claim and hiding the findings under the President's and Speaker's petticoats, inevitably infers that there is something very embarrassing which the administration wants to hide. 

Already seriously compromised, public trust is further squandered and the ‘Honourables’ score another own goal against themselves. Because the IC report will inevitably be released – or leaked.

Why not keep their own promise and obligation: embrace transparency, then, if the IC findings are unfair, correcting them will not be scuttled by the universal perception of wrong-doing which the cover-up has surely engendered.

  OWN GOALS

It’s the same with the prime minister’s still unresolved statutory returns. I must believe that he could readily resolve all outstanding questions regarding the sources of his wealth instead of trying to ‘drape up’ in court the anti-corruption institution of his own creation. Can you imagine what that trial will be like? 

Same goes for the entire Build Back Better effort. The free-for-all of the NaRRA regimen, even if it survives legal and regulatory challenges, is bound to backfire. Despite all the money which is available; notwithstanding Desmond and Pearnel’s earnestness, rehousing those in shelters and replacing roofs are way behind schedule.

Tens of thousands are still living “under tarpaulins” while their Housing Trust money is garnished to pay a grossly inefficient state apparatus.

Those who are contributors to the Trust, now in their time of greatest need, become beggars for the roof for which they were faithfully saving.  

SULLEN ANGER

 So the people despair and, in their sullen anger, join unbridled state agents to become murderers of life and hope. Check the blood flow in Southside and Granville last week.

 Listen to the usually accommodating Mr Newman, the taxi-man leader, encouraging his members not to strike against the fare injustice done them because: “I don’t want a police to box, kick or shoot any taxi operator tomorrow …”. He knows the reality. Trust is replaced by fear.

We are creating our own mini-trumpist order where the leaders claim victory over crime by sanctioning other crimes; sue the agencies of their own creation for doing what they are supposed to and leapfrog unproductive procedures instead of correcting them.

COVER-UP

Trump and his family have been given immunity from tax scrutiny and he is canonised by Christian Nationalists as the Good Shepherd of the Bible.  Where do we stand in relation to our similar issues of accountability, moral probity and the defence of life?

Division, acrimony, the bitter-gall screech power in Parliament, replace the legitimate and mature exercise of power, the essence of which Hannah Arendt, the great post-Holocaust political philosopher, describes as always “collective, consensual and relational”. 

KILLING SPREE

Even the previously pliant churches can’t take it anymore. We pretend that we can kill people with bullets, stones or systemic neglect, without a cost to our executioners and to our own sense of ourselves. 

There is no sanitary way to kill someone. Beyond the barbarity of the slayings, what is in the soul of those who can slit a lover’s throat or fling a woman’s body into the back of a police jeep like the carcass of the dog you have just crushed? Where did those criminals learn such contempt for life?  Without more, killing them, they multiply.

LEADERSHIP?

Not a peep from a minister of “peace”.  The prime minister who laudably champions “remaking the social fabric”, weakly urges restraint on the part of those the State has already unleashed!  Where is his cry in support of the preservation of life being heeded? We so want to trust Dr Holness’ words but there is a huge and growing disconnect between what he says at the Police College and the actions of his administration.

Pilate washed his hands and Jesus was crucified. Saul watched the Pharisees stone Stephen and thoroughly approved. 

Oh yes. “INDECOM is investigating”. That is supposed to be the placebo. Stephen Miller, Trump’s side-kick, must be speaking about us. “We live in a world that is governed by force, governed by power”.

INDECOM risks becoming a sop. Crime scenes are disturbed and bystanders threatened and disbursed long before they arrive. 

Human life is no longer the supreme and sublime receptacle of God’s presence but the plaything of the disrespectful and self-contemptuous.  The body cameras remain in their boxes, the guns are recycled, and the repetitive after-killing narrative beggars belief. We can identify the next generation of gang members from 5th grade.

What will happen on Judgment Day when every life must be accounted for?

FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS

Our brothers and sisters in Cuba, starving and in darkness, have now been declared a national security threat by the Goliath of the Empire. This is clearly a prelude for war and overthrow.

 The Cuban government and people have never failed in their friendship towards Jamaica.  Do we stand with them in this peril?  

When some Cubans flee to our shores for refuge like Bolivar did, will we throw them back into the sea as the masters of the Middle Passage did to the human cargo on the Zong?  Or run them just like how we treat the Haitians?  Will we continue to sell out innocent people for 30 pieces of silver – aka a visa?

Do we respect human dignity and offer friendship only when it suits us, or when the US approves? And who will defend us if we suffer the same fate as our neighbours when Massa says it’s our turn for regime change?

Same knife stick sheep, stick goat. Today fi dem, tomorrow fi we.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.