The death of due process

By Peter Espeut

Would you like to live in a country where senior police officers send out squads to kill citizens without due process? Well, if you live in Jamaica, maybe you already do. Jamaica has one of the highest rates of police killings in the world; and one of the highest murder rates. The police commissioner has predicted that the rate of police killings will come down when the murder rate comes down. Maybe the police have no confidence in due process, in the Jamaican court system, which is why they have become judge, jury and executioner. What is a fact is that the majority of the Jamaican public has lost confidence in the police.

Would you like to live in a country where a politician can break procurement guidelines, send a contractor to build structures on public land without permission and without due process being followed, collect the rent at his constituency office, resign, and then is reinstated because he is said to have broken no law? Well, if you live in Jamaica, you do. For this and many other reasons, Jamaica is perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where the private sector can buy influence with politicians to avoid due process, and persons can enter politics poor and become wealthy after a few years. What is a fact is that there are many - locally and overseas - who have lost confidence in the fundamental honesty of Jamaican politicians and the Jamaican Government.

Would you live here?

Would you like to live in a country where a foreign government requests your government to extradite a politically connected mobster for drug-dealing and gunrunning, and where instead of allowing the extradition process to run its course in the courts, and instead of trying to find out whether that person is guilty of drug-dealing and gunrunning, the prime minister would hire foreign lobbyists to lobby for the charges against the mobster to be dropped? Well, if you live in Jamaica, you live in that sort of country. Such behaviour will cause even members of his own party to lose confidence in that prime minister - even so far as to throw the party out of office.

Would you like to live in a country where the citizens have so lost confidence in the political process and the available parties that only about half turn out to vote on election day, and the winning party is elected with the support of less than 30 per cent of those eligible to vote? Well, if you live in Jamaica, that is exactly the kind of country you live in. In November 2011, there were 1,648,036 persons on the Jamaican voters' list. Only 52.76 per cent of them turned out to vote in December 2011, and the government currently in power received the votes of only 28.11 per cent of those on the voters' list. This is the most unpopular government in the history of Jamaica. And they have become even more unpopular since the wage freeze, the devaluation of the dollar, the rising cost of food and utilities (the rising cost of living, generally), and high and increasing bank charges. The country is sitting on a powder keg!

government corruption

Would you like to live in a country where governments enter into secret deals with companies owned by foreign militarised governments, without due process? Would you like to live in a country where the citizens are kept in the dark for months about major projects involving billions of dollars and the importation of thousands of foreign workers, despite public outcry and calls for more information? Would you like to live in a country which already has inadequate environmental legislation, and in which the government seems set to approve an environmentally damaging infrastructure project bypassing the due process of environmental due diligence? Well, if you live in Jamaica, it seems you do.

According to a report in another newspaper, "the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) yesterday confirmed that Goat Islands will indeed be the site of a Chinese seaport". Imagine that! The government of Jamaica confirms that the Goat Islands will be the site of a Chinese seaport even before the Chinese government-owned company has submitted their detailed proposal, and before the terms of reference of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) have been prepared, never mind performed. It really doesn't matter what the EIA shows, because the government has already made up its mind. So much for due process!

Governments of Jamaica since Independence have shown little respect for due process, because they have been corrupt. How we miss Mutty Perkins!

When a government does not respect due process, everyone loses confidence in it and the nation ceases to be the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business. Oh, for a Jamaican spring!

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and environmentalist.