Sorry doesn’t always make it right, Mr Bunting
If we indulge in a moment of potential naivete, by taking certain developments involving Mr Peter Bunting and Mr Derrick Smith at face value, we might start by inviting readers’ forgiveness.
First, Mr Bunting, the national security minister apologised for his very nasty comment on the weekend likening the Opposition’s reaction to increasing murders to “behaving like a set of John Crows”, which are among the scavengers most detested by Jamaicans.
We are, of course, very sceptical of politicians who take it for sport to make outlandish, boorish statements that they and their mindless supporters find to be cute and then apologise, thinking that by saying ‘sorry’, that makes it right.
Mr Bunting must understand that it is the right and duty of an Opposition to point out failures in the Government’s performance. By making the ‘John Crow’ comment, Mr Bunting shows that he has not, certainly intellectually, accepted that right and duty, and that he believes his performance in the crime portfolio is above criticism.
Still, we are desperate to believe that he is sincere in the apology, especially given the tone and careful wording: “The language of politics is often rough and encouraged by the atmosphere at political rallies.
“But two wrongs don’t make a right. Last Sunday I made comments at a constituency conference in St Andrew Eastern that were unnecessarily harsh and seem to have caused a fair amount of discomfort…I have been focused on Unite for Change, and my remarks were contrary to that objective. Therefore, I would like to use this opportunity to apologise for those remarks.”
More importantly, perhaps, Mr Bunting appealed for closer cooperation with the Opposition in fighting crime, saying rightly that the two major political parties could no longer afford to diminish their will and efforts to defeat crime in the country by political point-scoring and gamesmanship.
“This will only serve to weaken the morale of the security forces, embolden the criminals and trigger undue fear and alarm in the society. Let us instead unite around the best ideas to tackle this problem,” he urged.
Second, we commend Mr Smith — Mr Bunting’s opposite number — on the tone of a news release on Tuesday night’s slaying of woman Police Constable Crystal Thomas by gunmen as she was making her way home in a public passenger vehicle.
In a joint statement with his party leader Mr Andrew Holness, Mr Smith avoided the usual approach of using every killing to score political points. Instead, the language was clearly non-partisan and not inflammatory. It also laid the blame where it should be:
“It is evident that the criminal elements unleashing a trail of horror upon us as law-abiding members of society are…no respecter of persons and seem to have no reservation in visiting unspeakable brutality upon their victims. For them to have brazenly snuffed out the life of Constable Thomas upon discovering that she was an officer of the law, is in itself an unmistakeable signal that their savagery and callousness know no bounds.”
The Opposition also urged Jamaicans to spare a thought for the hard-working men and women of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) at this time, and called on he JCF “to be vigilant at all times, and take necessary precautions in ensuring their own safety and that of the public”.
Is this the start of something good?