The Politics of Peace

Robert Buddan, Contributor

As the year ended, a number of revelations this past December exposed the dangerous course destined for Jamaica's politics over the year ahead. These revelations take us inside Jamaica's politics of violence, specifically the relationship between the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), the JLP government and the infamous Shower Posse.

Many a government would have fallen based on what we already know about these links. However, Jamaica's political culture is what scholars of political participation might call a spectator culture rather than a participant civic culture. People look on and largely restrict themselves to commentary rather than believing they can actually take a stand and make a difference. The difference they need to make is a big one - changing the culture from a politics of violence to a politics of peace.

CITY POLITICS

The revelations have come from WikiLeaks which publishes leaked information, such as those from and between governments, in this case, from the United States (US) Embassy in Jamaica and the cables it sends to its home government. A December 22 report said that Desmond McKenzie, the mayor of Kingston, told the US Embassy in a memo written in 2009, that the JLP administration had pursued a policy of engaging Christopher Coke to contain crime. To add to the farce, McKenzie wanted to use this argument to get the embassy to call off the extradition of Coke, saying it would jeopardise what that government was trying to achieve.

The UK Guardian, reporting on this alliance between a suspected criminal and government said: "The image of a powerful Jamaican mayor working for years on crime-fighting strategies with a man portrayed by the US Justice Department as one of the world's most dangerous drug kingpins is stark." At any rate, Jamaica ran record levels of murder in those years of alliance and crime-fighting was kept off balance as police commissioners came and went frequently.

Probably the Guardian was close to the truth. It said that Coke was loyal to the JLP, and several of its members, including McKenzie. I would think that McKenzie should be investigated by the police. He must be questioned by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) because he could have given the impression that he was acting on behalf of the KSAC. Our political culture must demand this if we really want a politics of peace.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

While McKenzie was running city politics we also heard through WikiLeaks, again on December 22, that the prime minister's wife, Lorna Golding, took it up on herself in December 2009 to invite a US diplomatic staff officer to hear her foreign-affairs views on the Coke matter. Her view was that the People's National Party (PNP) was stirring up the diaspora and American congressman, Charles Rangel, to influence Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State. There was a grand conspiracy. They were behind the declining relations between the Jamaican and US governments, the delay in appointing a new US ambassador to Jamaica and the difficulties in negotiating an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

The American cable described her talk as "surreal", "disjointed" and "rambling". She reportedly seemed "completely unprepared" and "could not stay on message". This, the UK Guardian said, reflected badly on the Golding administration. It reflected indecisiveness and lack of direction for relying on conspiracy theories and the ramblings of the prime minister's wife. The Guardian did not think the Golding administration was trying to establish a back channel to the US administration through this meeting. But Golding knew of the meeting. Did he not wonder what it was about, and did he not care that the country's foreign policy was being handled by a neophyte, without the apparent knowledge of the minister of foreign affairs?

The political and protocol officers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Prime Minister must make sure government is not run in such a careless way through unelected and unappointed relatives and their 'ramblings'. The real conspiracy is the alliance between persons designated as criminals and a government and its relatives. Mrs. Golding suggested, according to The Guardian, that the whole extradition request had been orchestrated to embarrass her husband, politically. That is indeed surreal. What impression will people have of how our government works when they read this? They will think we run a ramshackle government bent on protecting the violent and the politics of violence.

On December 15, Cuban officials charged that Jamaica had not been cooperating with Cuba between 2008 and 2009 in tackling the international drug trade. Is it the propaganda strategy of the alliance to claim that it is part of a PNP conspiracy to undermine Jamaica-US relations about which the prime minister's wife invited an American embassy official to ramble about?

WikiLeaks revealed the Cuban complaint in a correspondence between Cuban and American officials. Peter Bunting of the PNP was direct in his comments. This lack of co-operation turned around the full co-operation Jamaica enjoyed with Cuba previously. He said: "The claims in this cable give full credence to many reports of the close links between the JLP administration and the criminal underworld." Of great embarrass-ment, too, is the fact that Mr Golding is chairman of the Caribbean Community going around speaking as a crime fighter.

UNSOLVED PROBLEM

It is more than naïve to think that an apology from the prime minister for his role in the Manatt affair, and a commission of enquiry into it, chaired by a party sympathiser, solves the problem. It seems to have quietened the big names in the private sector and the civil-society organisations. But the JLP seems too deeply embedded in dubious networks to be expected to conduct domestic and foreign policy in a way that promotes peace and civility.

On top of all this are more recent allegations from Ian Johnson charging that minister of government, James Robertson, is connected with violent people. Mr Johnson has filed a US$15 million lawsuit against Mr Robertson in a Florida court, for malicious assault and battery. The lawsuit says that Robertson has orchestrated three attempts on Johnson's life; asked him to commit contract killings for him; directed the killing of Johnson's mother; and called him to a meeting at Jamaica House to threaten to put a stop to Johnson's shipping business through his contacts at Jamaica Customs.

To cap it all, the lawyer associated with Christopher Coke is now part of the legal team for James Robertson. He is Tom Tavares-Finson who holds no less a position than deputy president of the Jamaican senate.

Can we really build a peaceful society going into the new year from out of this?

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.