MISS HEATHER Robinson has once again quit political work because she refuses to deal with criminal elements. We applaud her stance as an important repudiation of whatever nexus there may still be between crime and politics.
In resigning as manager of the political campaign of West St. Thomas PNP candidate Anthony Hylton, she is repeating what she did in June 1996 as a Member of Parliament. At that time she chose to give up the parliamentary seat she held in South Central St. Catherine after linking a Councillor with criminal elements and not getting party support in this stance.
This time the criminal nexus appears even more concrete. As she told the Sunday Gleaner, one of Mr. Hylton's youthful supporters had shown her an illegal gun at a meeting in Seaforth. The young man suggested that things had to be done through him.
Miss Robinson not only resigned as campaign manager, she reported the matter to the police, an action for which Mr. Hylton has expressed "unequivocal support" even as he regretted her departure.
The history of political violence in this country has involved the arming of party activists on both sides of the political spectrum. In the current campaign the recent fuss over party flags in Central St. Catherine involved three shooting deaths, reportedly of JLP supporters.
That problem appears to have been settled without any reports of reprisals; but it caused us to wonder momentarily if it signalled a revival of the deadly 1980s when political violence was at a peak.
The criminal links have been euphemistically labelled "old style politics" which politicians such as Bruce Golding renounced in his departure from the JLP and his subsequent stint of inconclusive leadership with the NDM.
But no politician, in our view, has been as forthright as Miss Robinson in denouncing this kind of linkage between politics and guns. Most political leaders, when asked, readily condemn any notion of unseemly connections. They would be more convincing by emulating the type of courage Miss Heather Robinson has shown in a principled stand for clean politics.
