Of one thing we are certain, Prime Minister Bruce Golding is not going to have the time to personally intervene in all the burning national issues on his plate, in the way he has with the Gully-Gaza rivalry and the duellists, Vybz Kartel and Mavado.

His meeting on Tuesday at Jamaica House with the two popular dancehall artistes was meant, we are sure, to send a powerful signal that the violence and disorder spawned by the rivalry between them and their supporters must come to an end now.

We don’t write off Mr Golding’s initiative as a waste of time or as something beneath the dignity of his office, because of its potential to save Jamaican lives, especially among the schoolchildren who clearly don’t quite grasp the folly of their own adaptation of the rivalry. In fact, if Mr Golding’s meeting saves even one life, it would have been worth it.

What we are more worried about is whether there is such a lack of capacity to solve problems like these at other levels in our nation, that it takes a busy and overworked prime minister to create time out of his pressured schedule, in order to give it the attention it deserves.

Of course, Mr Golding, the astute politician, might well have chosen to bask in the obvious opportunity for grabbing the spotlight among the younger voters, knowing fully well that it is there that the Gully-Gaza fiasco holds greater significance.

We would be naive to begrudge him that, but we most certainly hope that even if some political public relations spoils were there for the taking, that he was after a greater cause.

Because there really is a genuine issue relating to our lack of capacity for conflict resolution, that frequently enough presents itself in things like the Gully-Gaza debacle. Simple differences among individuals and groups so easily spiral out of hand. And, of course, the first resort is to violence as the solution.

The example has been well established in the bloody internecine warfare pitting supporters of our two main political parties against each other and that has wasted countless lives.

Adidja ‘Vybz Kartel’ Palmer and David ‘Mavado’ Brooks might have been charmed by the idea of sitting down at Jamaica House with the prime minister and three of his Cabinet ministers. But we hope that they were made to understand that there are consequences to their actions, and that some of those consequences might have to involve police action, as happened recently when Mavado wanted to stage his ‘birthday bash’.

For sure, Mr Golding cannot be expected to run to a meeting every time two dancehall artistes have a clash, whether lyrically on stage or violently in the streets.

But then he doesn’t need us to tell him that, does he?