Dear Editor,
Well, well, wonders never cease. China's former Communist leader Chairman Mao once noted that "diehards are hard but not hard unto death". For a long time I was sure that he said that only because he had never met any Jamaicans. Now, after reading, and rereading, your editorial of November 25 on the urgency for law and order, maybe, just maybe, there is light at the end of the Jamaican tunnel.
When one of our two major newspapers asserts "by whatever means necessary, law and order, as directed by the State, must replace the dons and gangs" and "If, in the view of some, that would make Jamaica a police state, then so be it" it is time for our leaders to sit up and act.
Jamaicans have been moaning and wringing their hands over crime for decades, yet whenever anyone proposes anything that would actually ameliorate the situation, the same voices are the first to yell about "human rights". These voices conveniently forget that the supreme human right is the right to life, a right denied to more than a thousand Jamaicans every year.
So, let's get serious. Act now on the Observer editorial. Scrap the preliminary inquiry system entirely. Ditto the unworkable jury system. Most countries get along just fine without it. Revise the archaic rules of evidence. Deploy the Jamaica Defence Force full time in law enforcement. Do what we seem to love to do so much: copy our former colonial masters in Britain. But, this time, do what they did in Northern Ireland by introducing preventative detention with a strong independent review panel. Bring back capital punishment.
This patient called Jamaica is too far gone for the band-aids and aspirins we have been trying for so long. The radical surgery called for in your editorial is the only way out. Otherwise, we will be wringing our hands and asking for divine intervention forever.
Errol W.A. Townshend
16 Turtledove Grove
Scarborough, Ontario
Canada M1X 2B2
Act now on the Observer editorial... for law and order
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Well, well, wonders never cease. China's former Communist leader Chairman Mao once noted that "diehards are hard but not hard unto death". For a long time I was sure that he said that only because he had never met any Jamaicans. Now, after reading, and rereading, your editorial of November 25 on the urgency for law and order, maybe, just maybe, there is light at the end of the Jamaican tunnel.
When one of our two major newspapers asserts "by whatever means necessary, law and order, as directed by the State, must replace the dons and gangs" and "If, in the view of some, that would make Jamaica a police state, then so be it" it is time for our leaders to sit up and act.
Jamaicans have been moaning and wringing their hands over crime for decades, yet whenever anyone proposes anything that would actually ameliorate the situation, the same voices are the first to yell about "human rights". These voices conveniently forget that the supreme human right is the right to life, a right denied to more than a thousand Jamaicans every year.
So, let's get serious. Act now on the Observer editorial. Scrap the preliminary inquiry system entirely. Ditto the unworkable jury system. Most countries get along just fine without it. Revise the archaic rules of evidence. Deploy the Jamaica Defence Force full time in law enforcement. Do what we seem to love to do so much: copy our former colonial masters in Britain. But, this time, do what they did in Northern Ireland by introducing preventative detention with a strong independent review panel. Bring back capital punishment.
This patient called Jamaica is too far gone for the band-aids and aspirins we have been trying for so long. The radical surgery called for in your editorial is the only way out. Otherwise, we will be wringing our hands and asking for divine intervention forever.
Errol W.A. Townshend
16 Turtledove Grove
Scarborough, Ontario
Canada M1X 2B2
Act now on the Observer editorial... for law and order
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