MONTEGO BAY, St James – Outspoken pastor of the King’s Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mount Salem, St James, Charles Brivett, has called on Government for stricter punitive action against individuals who breach the COVID-19 protocols in the new year, as part of efforts to minimise the spread of the novel coronavirus.

At the same time, several clergymen across western Jamaica have blasted their colleagues for being afraid to speak out against injustice in the society.

“I have some realistic hopes and some unrealistic hopes. Unrealistic is that we will put the [novel coronavirus] pandemic under control. We are too indisciplined to do that, one, and two, the Government is too afraid to take measures to see that that is done,” said Pastor Brivett.

“And by that I mean to run an election and become Government the party has to be popular, but you cannot govern by pandering to the gallery. Once you become a leader you must be prepared to make tough decisions which [might] make you unpopular.”

He pointed to the recent illegal party in Discovery Bay, St Ann, where five people were shot, two fatally.

“I can give you an example. These illegal parties, we don’t have enough police to lock them down. But when we catch somebody breaking the rule, we must make the fines prohibitive,” he stressed.

“Like the incident in St Ann over the weekend where we are hearing in the news that people got shot at an illegal party. We need to hear that the operators of that party have been arrested, that they have been hauled before the court and that they have been given a hefty fine which would be a deterrent to anybody else who was thinking of doing that nonsense. So, I say that we can control the pandemic is one of my expectations. But it is unrealistic because one is that the nation is too indisciplined for that to be done and the Government is too coward to see to it that it is being done.”

Bishop Oneil Russell, head of Ark of the Covenant Holy Trinity in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, says too many of the religious leaders are spineless, arguing that that has to change in the coming year.

“The churches… the leaders and I am going to say the church gets coward. Church leaders become cowards and I repeat, church leaders have become cowards. They are afraid to step out. They are afraid to come to community meetings, they are afraid to play the part in coming back into the community, having street meetings to meet with the youngsters,” Russell told the Jamaica Observer West.

He argued that church leaders who should have a great role to play in the communities where crime and violence are rampant, are instead cowering.

“When the war is up people don’t want to come out to worship so our duty is to meet the young people part way just like how I am doing here [Savanna-la-Mar], meeting the young people. Go to them if they don’t want to come to us. We need to…not just to drive in your car, go home like a coward and afraid to walk in the community where you worship. That has to stop! A lot of pastors don’t live where their churches are, they have to drive there but when they come to the community or where the church is, all they do after church they go back into the car and drive and you don’t see them until the next Sunday.”

Another clergyman, Canon Hartley Perrin, rector of the St Peter’s Anglican Church in Petersfield, Westmoreland, agreed that cowardice is rife among church leaders, but attributes it to self-preservation.

“Some of us have become cowards. We have sought to protect our own lives as well our own livelihood sometimes at the expense of realising that we are called to a sacrificial ministry where those before us became martyrs for a cause, but I don’t know that many of us are prepared to be martyrs for any cause. Because, for example, when we see wrongs, especially perpetrated by young people, we are afraid that they will burn down our houses or shoot us so we keep quiet,” argued Canon Perrin, who is also the custos of Westmoreland.

“So we are not brave enough to confront them and say you are doing something wrong, so it perpetuates. As long as we maintain that kind of attitude towards wrong, wrong will always prevail. We have to show an example that yes, we are not afraid of the forces of evil.”

Like last year, he hoped that “things will improve morally and otherwise in the country” in the new year.

“I am of the view that we are losing our moral authority as leaders, both political leaders and religious leaders. We (the Church) have been beaten as a result of the Kevin Smith and other such, as well as within the political realm with corruption and all that sort of thing. I am really hoping that next year will see us taking the necessary steps towards improving the moral conduct of our people across the island, especially in terms of our leadership,” Perrin argued.

Russell, who insisted that leaders have failed the youths, is hoping for a turnaround in 2022.

“Trust me, the churches, like the Government, fail the young men, fail the people and I will never apologise for that. Successive governments from both political parties, like the church, have failed the youths. They have failed to get the youths into programmes. When they walk on the streets, they don’t even want to call to the young people. I hope 2022 will be better. I hope in 2022 the leaders will look into themselves and realise that we need to get to the youths in time. We don’t only need to bury them. We need to baptise them, we need to save them, we need to save their lives. We just don’t need to go to a funeral to say ‘ashes to ashes dust to dust.’ We need to save these young men before it’s too late,” said Russell, who is a former peace keeper in the Peace Management Initiative and also president of the Cooke Street Citizens’ Association in Westmoreland.