Gangsters now bigger than politicans who created them – Bishop Rowan Edwards

Prime Minister Andrew Holness and leader of the parliamentary Opposition Mark Golding must take responsibility for pulling the country back from the brink of destruction in light of its staggering murder rate, which saw 1,498 persons killed in domestic and other disputes last year.

Dr Rowan Edwards, founder and bishop of the Lighthouse Worship Cenre in Spanish Town, on Tuesday urged both leaders to “stop playing with the lives of Jamaicans” and instead, unite to end the long-standing iniquity that was started by their political predecessors.

Declaring that he knew for a fact that none of these current leaders were involved in issuing guns to criminals, Bishop Edwards said they, however, had not done enough to stop the reign of criminals whom they had inherited by virtue of the garrisons created by former leaders of both the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). But they are not blameless, he argued.

“Sometimes I get angry because both leaders now are trying to play political football with the lives of the people in this country. Some of their predecessors built garrisons and gave guns to gunmen, and some of them came out and confessed it. They talked about it ... that they did that,” he told the New Year’s Prayer Breakfasted hosted by the Non-Geographic Number 2 Chaplaincy Services Branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

“You know that the Clansman gang is connected to the PNP, and you know that the One Order gang is connected to the JLP, and so they breed and multiply themselves over and over,” the clergy man told his audience at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.

Reining in these gangsters is now near impossible, given how the dynamics have changed since the political leaders outfitted criminals with guns as a means of ensuring control of their constituencies in days gone by, according to Bishop Edwards.

“The politicians used to give them little ‘popcorn money’ to take care of their turf, but now the money the gunmen are making through extortion is bigger than the politicians’, and the politicians now cannot control them. So, one time it was political war, but now it’s gang war,” he explained.

Both political leaders must combine their efforts and ideas to bring the nation out of this rut, Bishop Edwards said.

“Their predecessors started it, now they must come together and have it fixed; and so I am raising my voice because there are some serious situations affecting the nation. I want all of us to come together as law-enforcement officers, and come to a common understanding that God wants this country back.”