Peter Espeut | Keeping bad company

“A man is known by the company he keeps” – Aesop (620-564 BC).

“Show me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Keep us free from evil powers” – Jamaica National Anthem

Last week I wrote that in both Jamaica and the United States of America, voters in upcoming elections are faced with the tough choice between two evil powers. Sadly, the prayer of the author of the lyrics of Jamaica’s National Anthem – Jamaican Methodist minister the Rev the Hon Hugh Braham Sherlock OJ MBE (1905-1998) – is yet to be answered.

Born a decade before Jamaica’s political independence I grew up during the garrisonisation of Kingston and lower St Andrew, in terms of the use of public funds to create monochrome residential neighbourhoods of political exclusion by both the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP), as well as the arming of political thugs by their principals to enforce political purity in those areas. Those areas – and Jamaica herself – were in the grip of evil powers.

This was not something hidden. These political gunmen were celebrated by politicians from both sides, who openly associated with them, and openly attended their funerals. Who can forget the “orange funeral” of the top-ranking political “Don” at the National Arena on May 8, 2001 attended by three sitting cabinet ministers.

On April 22, 1978 a capacity crowd packed the National Stadium for the “One Love Peace Concert”, bringing together warring political factions, after gang leaders from the PNP (Aston “Bucky Marshall” Thompson, Don of Matthew’s Lane) and JLP (Claudius “Claudie” Massop, Don of Tivoli Gardens) had come together on their own and decided there should be peace.

Claudie Massop went to London to persuade Bob Marley to perform; he had been living there in self-imposed exile after being shot two years previously in an apparent assassination attempt. He agreed!

During his performance at the One Love Concert, Jacob “Killer” Miller and the Inner Circle band performed “Peace Treaty Special”, during which he called on stage Claudie Massop and Bucky Marshall in a symbolic peace gesture.

SHAKE HANDS

During his set, the Hon Bob called Michael Manley and Edward Philip George Seaga on stage to shake hands. As Bob raised the clasped hands in the air, the roar of the crowd was deafening, and hundreds of camera flashes lit the sky. Then Bob struck the first chord of the song of the century:

One Love, One Heart

Let’s get together and feel alright

PNP Don Aston “Bucky Marshall” Thompson was shot and killed in New York in March 1980. On February 4, 1979 JLP Don Claudius “Claudie” Massop was executed by a special detachment of police on the corner of Industrial Terrace and Marcus Garvey Drive; Massop was hit by 129 bullets, some in his armpits, indicating that his hands were in the air. The peace was over!

The political gangs are still with us (although more numerous and spread out across the island), and our per capita murder rate (and rate of extrajudicial killings by the security forces) place us near the top of the list of the most murderous places on earth. Neither the JLP nor PNP has made any effort to dismantle their garrisons which ensure numbers of “safe seats” across the political landscape.

I lived through the period where it was commonplace for candidates to gain more than 100 per cent of the vote in several polling divisions (i.e., those who stuffed the ballot boxes were mathematical dunces). That phenomenon has since become known as “overvoting”, a euphemism for bogus voting and electoral fraud. Each of those ballot boxes was in the close custody of presiding officers and poll clerks from when they were certified empty to when their contents were counted. Those politically appointed officials could not be unaware of the ballot stuffing; yet during those very dark days of our political history not one presiding officer or poll clerk (or those who suborned them) was ever brought to book for electoral fraud. The politicians loyally protected their own.

In those days, we had no genuine democracy. Our electoral system – and Jamaica herself – were in the grip of evil powers.

Have things changed? The advent of CAFFE (Jamaica’s electoral watchdog) and the Electoral Commission of Jamaica have brought an end to ballot stuffing; now valid votes are bought by both parties, or persons from the opposite side are paid to stay away.

OPEN TO QUESTION

The quality of Jamaica’s democracy is still open to question.

When popular singer Vybz Kartel (Adidja Azim Palmer) famous for his gun lyrics [e.g. Pass mi Gun (2009), Gun Session (2005), God ‘n Gun (2022)] was released from jail, and announced that he would like to run for political office on a PNP ticket, I expected a quick and firm banishment of that thought. “Not guilty” does not mean innocent, and mistrial is not exculpation. Why would a political party which you might expect to be trying to free itself from its sordid past, wish to be associated with a singer whose lyrics lionise and celebrate guns and violence? Below is a sample from the three songs mentioned above, the last released just two years ago:

Mi granny seh from mi a likkle bwoy

She see di mark a di beast inna mi eye

666! Any gyal, any guy

Bury six foot six wid six piece a ply

Throat lock off, no air supply

When Spanish Town long gun dem raise up high

Bwoy marrow fly gon’ way inna di sky

Guh hitch up pon a black johncrow weh did a fly

Hey! Dem bwoy deh nahve nuh gun

Dem bwoy deh nahve nuh rifle

Dem collapse like Twin Tower but I am the Eiffel

Dem likkle life will stifle cah dem wah fi tek mi title

So dem ago a dead even if dem run go inna di bible

Yuh roll wid Jesus Christ?

Me have 24 disciple:

Tech, Ruger, Luger, Bryco, Beretta, Calico, Smith & Wesson, Heckler & Koch, Ingram, 14, M16, plus mi Lawson

Run go inna di church and mek mi shoot you and di parson

No bwoy cyan mek we run weh

Put we faith inna God and we gun dem

Glock .19 lock off yuh lungs, yeah

M16 rifle a done dem

No bwoy cyan mek we run weh

The words of wise old Aesop quoted above are ringing in my ears! When you fight evil with evil, any way you turn you end up with … evil!

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com