A CORRESPONDENT on the Letters Page opposite, in reaction to last Sunday's Public Affairs article, has suggested that we are in the middle of a civil war. The Sunday article was written by Trevor Gordon-Somers, a Jamaican who is a retired Chief of Staff of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and was also a special representative of the UN Secretary-General involved in peace negotiations in Liberia.
With that kind of international perspective, Mr. Gordon-Somers is equipped to sound a cautionary note about the local episodes of social disorder similar to events in some African countries. He cites guerrilla wars originating from ideological premises degenerating into "wanton killing fields motivated by greed and the pursuit of personal power in which children, women and the elderly are prime victims". While the local murder toll in recent times has followed this frightening pattern, Jamaica's own civil conflicts have evolved over the last two decades from purely political rivalry between the two major parties. Criminal enterprise has emerged as a factor in the organisation of garrisons or enclaves with some degree of political collusion. The critical factor in the evolution is the rise of the 'don' or 'area leader' gaining popular support simply because the political leaders they have supplanted in some constituencies have not been able to match their supply of scarce benefits. It is this kind of material benefit that even well-meaning church leaders would find difficult to match.
It is understandable that this kind of development, as far as it now obtains, seems to be confined mostly to the inner-city communities of the Corporate Area; and the growth runs concurrently with politics which becomes a subset of the prevailing 'runnings', legal or otherwise.
The deterioration of Spanish Town along these lines has cast a pall of criminality over its potential as an important historical treasure. Perhaps the most pervasive element of a sense of civil unrest is the continuing spate of killings along with the apparent ease with which illegal guns are available. The revelations of illicit wealth amassed as disclosed during the Bulbie episode have raised questions about political connections.
Even so we sense that the stronger impulses are political, underlying the transitions to new leadership by the traditional means rather than through violent civil conflict. The input from lobby groups watchful of political conduct must be maintained in this regard.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
