The PNP is already in panic mode
If you pick up one end of the stick you also pick up the other. — Ethiopian proverb
A conspicuous cloud of political panic is rapidly engulfing 89 Old Hope Road. The People’s National Party needs a political muse. In its absence, antiquated political roughnecks and other relics are desperately trying to fill the vacuum. These vestiges seem more interested, however, in preventing the dying embers of their political careers from being extinguished.
Some weeks ago I wrote among other things: “The PNP has been shouting in the highways and byways for the Administration to carry out re-verification of the voters’ list, this year. The Administration says Cabinet agreed to reapportion the country’s limited resources to fight crime at this time. Phillips is unmoved. Last month Phillips and the PNP threatened street demonstrations: ‘Phillips threatens to take disputes with Government to the streets ( The Gleaner, March 1, 2018). Phillips continues to massively misread the present political tea leaves. He is panicking.” [ Jamaica Observer, March 25, 2018].
K D ‘rouses’ posse
Dr Phillips’s political anxieties have now also taken full root in the Senate. This headline in The Gleaner of March 29, 2018 does not augur well for country and/or Norman Manley’s party: ‘K D Knight threatens to ‘rouse up’ country if no crime plan by April 30′. The story said, among other things: “Opposition Senator K D Knight has threatened to ‘rouse up’ Jamaicans against the Government if it does not present a crime plan by the end of April. At Tuesday’s sitting of the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said a crime plan will be revealed, but said he was waiting for the Parliament to back it.
“ ‘As I said, there is one element that we have not yet settled. The crime plan must include in it something to say that this Parliament agrees on a set of actions; that we are carving out national security as an area where there is bipartisan support for the policy,’ Holness said.
“Speaking in the Senate this morning, Knight took issue with Holness’s pronouncement calling it a public relations tactic.
“ ‘Prime Minister, come out with this plan; say something that the nation can galvanise around. A wishy-washy approach won’t work. People are in fear! People want to know what you are doing, if you can do something, [and] if your Government is up to the task. People just don’t want some Band-Aid approach,’ Knight said.
“He made the remark in his contribution to the debate on the resolution to extend the state of public emergency in the St Catherine North Police Division.
“’Emergency powers in particular areas like that is a Band-Aid approach,’ Knight said.
“’If I don’t hear a crime plan in the month of April, I am going to rouse up, so far as I can, the population to demand it. You might not believe it, but there are a lot I can rouse up in this country — a lot of people, including people from your Government side,’ Knight, a former national security minister, said.”
‘Rouse’, among other things, means to stir up, to make angry. Senator K D Knight is a very experienced lawyer. He chooses words with great care. I can only conclude, as I have done in the past, that he meant what he said and said what he meant. Recall, “[K D] Knight and other key supporters of Peter Phillips openly questioned party PNP [People’s National Party] President Portia Simpson Miller’s managerial competence during the 2006 presidential election: “If the person is popular and cannot hold the party together, the party is going to lose,” Knight said in 2006.” ( The Gleaner, July 16, 2008).
“Ex-Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has the unenviable distinction to have called two general elections and suffered defeat. Recall that in the aftermath of the February 25, 2016 rejection of the PNP, Senator K D Knight publicly stated that the PNP was ‘in survival mode’. (Nationwide News Network, September 20, 2016)
The most recent RJRGleaner Don Anderson polls indicate that two years after the PNP was booted from office it is still gripped in survival mode. These findings delivered a George Foreman-like uppercut to the hopes of Peter Phillips and his team:
Holness: 33 per cent good/very good; 34% poor/very poor; 33% average
Phillips: 16 per cent good/very good; 60 per cent poor/very poor; 24 per cent average
Government: 26 per cent good/very good; 38 per cent poor/very poor; 36 per cent average
Opposition: 17 per cent good/very good; 56 per cent poor/very poor; 27 per cent average.
Is severe political panic pushing the PNP to openly re-embrace the antediluvian political strategies of the 70s? Recall, it was extreme political panic that culminated in the sordid state of emergency in 1976. The mother of all corrupt general elections was held in 1976 under a state of emergency. It was declared on June 19, 1976 and lasted for a year. In the weeks and days preceding the December 15, 1976 General Election several key Jamaica Labour Party people, including Olivia “Babsy” Grange and Pearnel Charles, were detained. Charles was jailed for almost a year. The findings of the Smith Commission in the 1976 State of Public Emergency revealed that its calling was predicated upon the facilitation of political opportunism and not bona fide concerns about national security, as then Prime Minister Michael Manley told the country.
Recall, Manley told Parliament in 1976 that a “new and unique types of violence” [Hansard] had been imported into Jamaica and, therefore, the need for a state of emergency. I have provided incontrovertible evidence from the commission’s report in previous articles, which demonstrate that State power was corruptly used during the 1976 State of Public Emergency to keep Michael Manley in power. We must never pass that way again.
Philosopher George Santayana warned, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Speaking of the past, recall Senator K D Knight was the minister of national security “for more than a decade, starting in February 1989”. ( RJR News, April 15, 2013) Knight’s record as a minister of national security was woeful at best.
This awful story in the The Miami Herald of October 31, 2001, titled ‘Jamaica struggling to cut its alarming murder rate — New head of national security faces a raging crime wave’, encapsulates the stewardship of Knight at national security. It said, among other things: “So far, this year, 910 people have been killed in confrontations, about 30 more than in all of last year — a damaging statistic for an island that relies heavily on tourism for its livelihood. Stung by these numbers and worried over damage to the image of the lush island, Prime Minister P J Patterson last week removed his long-time friend K D Knight as the head of national security and replaced him with Peter Phillips, a former transportation minister with a reputation for effectiveness.
“In addition, the Government is placing more police officers, along with soldiers, on the streets to patrol the areas of Kingston where many of the killings have taken place. Knight said he regretted that the country’s crime rate had not declined during his tenure. He then called on all patriotic citizens to collaborate with the police in the fight against crime.”
Knight needs to tell the country about the security plans he published during his near 11 years of failure at the helm of national security portfolio. But, then again, maybe he best be quiet on that subject.
Dr Phillips was transport and works minister from 1998 to October 2001. To his eternal credit, he ushered in a decent transportation system in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR) in 1998. The groundwork for what is today the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) Limited was started in 1995 when the then Government decided that the time had come to restructure the public transport sector and invest in infrastructure to bring order to public transportation in the KMTR. Before the advent of the JUTC, what existed in the KMTR for public transportation was a disaster.
Phillips, however, buckled under the weight of the portfolio responsibility for national security: “In 2002, the murder rate moved to 40 per 100,000 and by 2005 it had risen to 64 per 100,000 population, placing Jamaica among nations with the highest murder rates in the world.” [Jamaica Constabulary Force: Police Crime Statistics]. On Phillips’s watch murders peaked at 1,674 in 2005. [JCF statistics]. Today, Phillips is the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. He opposed the zones of special operation initiative, arguing it was “oppressive”. He opposed the national identification system (NIDS). On March 20, The Gleaner carried this banner headline, ‘Crime Policy Failure! — Phillips rips into Holness Administration for declaring a second public [state of] emergency’. Dr Peter Phillips, PNP president, made these among other comments in Black River, St Elizabeth: “We cannot get ourselves into a situation in the country where we are going to have states of emergency as a permanent condition under which the people of the country are required to live.”
Someone needs to alert Phillips and the PNP to these poll findings: “The latest RJRGleaner Group Don Anderson poll has found that there is overwhelming public support for the state of emergency which was declared in St James in January of this year. The poll, which was conducted from February 22 to 26, has a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent. “Nine out of every 10 individuals that we interviewed supported the state of emergency that was imposed. Eighty-nine per cent, to be exact, said they were in support of the particular situation.” (adapted from RJR News, March 2, 2018)
There is just under a 70 per cent decline in murders in St James compared to last year. It is quite obvious that there are some among us who do not want to see crime, in particular murders, quartered and disembowelled. Doubtless they would have been terribly upset by this Jamaica Observer front page story last Monday: ‘Peace at last! St Catherine SOE extension welcomed by residents’. The story said among other things:
“Residents in the communities affected by the state of public emergency in the St Catherine North Police Division are welcoming the extension of the security measure while calling for the increased presence of police and military personnel in their communities to be permanent.
“ ‘I don’t believe one ugly criminal can raise dem head. The checkpoint is around. I can leave my house open and sleep with my doors and windows open,’ Ronel Bennett from Job’s Lane told the Jamaica Observer yesterday during a visit to the areas affected by the state of public emergency.
“ ‘I feel much safer and I like having them around. I was expecting them to be going door to door in people’s houses, but nothing like that. When I interact with them they are very courteous and they have brought some level of discipline to the area,’ he added.
“A taxi operator from Bog Walk, who identified himself as ‘Puma’, shared similar sentiments as Bennett: ‘Mi wouldn’t mind dem [security personnel] no lef.’
“ ‘The place safer with them. Everything weh you see deh a Spanish Town deh ya. It may nuh popular like Spanish Town but it deh ya. Once the soldier and police deh ya, nobody nah try nothing. But they are taking too long to start house-to-house searching, and that a gi di man dem time fi go hide dem gun. By the time dem start that they are not going to find that in any house. That should have happened long time,’ he said.
“He added: ‘I wouldn’t mind dem deh here forever and nuh lef. Is long time I saying soldiers must be in the streets, or else crime will not leave. Personally, the soldiers deal with it more intelligently than the police.’
“For Amanda Bell, another resident of Bog Walk, the state of public emergency is welcomed and, apart from the minor delay she experiences when going through checkpoints, she has no problem with it.
“In Spanish Town, David Brown, a vendor, said he was glad for the extension as he felt safer, even though it has affected his business.
“ ‘If I usually make 10 and now making six, [still] I feel satisfied. This is better than the fears I had before where you saw men just walk up, kill man and gone,’ he said.” ( Jamaica Observer, April 2, 2018)
Which alternative universe is Phillips, Knight and the PNP living?
Jamaica’s best days are ahead. I am betting on Jamaica, full stop!
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Garfield Higgins is an educator; journalist; and advisor to the minister of education, youth and information. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.