Dear Editor,

Last Friday morning the BBC carried footage of the upheavals in West Kingston, noting the call-up of the reserves to support the police. I expect there will be more international media exposure. “Wi name gone abroad” is how it would be stated in the vernacular.

The gangrenous alliance between politics and crime has broken out, and like the genie, cannot be put back in. Civil society should stop trying to palliate the prime minister and his coterie of sycophants. Their nurture and utilisation of criminal elements to further their objectives over many decades have forfeited any claim to sympathy.

Jamaica stands to benefit, ultimately, from the exposure of this sordid underbelly of its politics. In this regard, this administration is similar to the others before it. The difference here is that it is their connection to questionable characters that have been exposed to public view. What will the prime minister and his party say if Kingston erupts in flames if the police attempt to arrest Dudus?

What are they thinking now as Tivolites “circle the wagons” and set the stage for confrontation? I have this sense that we are, even now, nearer the beginning than the end of this matter.

Many of us remember Watergate, that 1972 Republican Party/government scandal in the US. It started slowly, as a police investigation of a burglary, and ended with the resignation of a president and his vice-president, and the imprisonment of several of the highest government officials, including the attorney general.

I see the same measured unravelling of the fabric of lies and deception now, that occurred then. There is this feeling that the main players have not yet “come clean”. After all the opportunities to tell all, and the public apology suggesting that all has been told, they find themselves now on the tiger’s back, and cannot get off. We should expect more stone-walling and obfuscation, but must continue the search for truth, and hold those who have betrayed the public trust accountable.

The Government is feeling the heat of accountability. Every administration must be made to realise that they are holders of a public trust, not an inheritance to squander as they please.

Michael R Nicholson

kovsky54@yahoo.com