Ronald Thwaites | Skewed thinking, misplaced priorities

It is a matter for rejoicing that the plight of the homeless single mother of eight children, Crystal Clarke, has been relieved by the gift of a new house. The Gleaner’s editorial last Saturday is right. Charity is always to be celebrated.

But charity is never a substitute for justice. And a system of societal morals and national priorities which tolerates and normalises the objective injustice of an unemployed woman, however well-intentioned, having to raise a large family on her own, is cruel and counterproductive.

Telling us about PATH can’t salve our consciences or solve her problem. Of course, the country needs a proper social security system as much, and more, as we need a proper national security apparatus. But what about personal responsibility? What was the thought when those children were being conceived?

There are hundreds of thousands of Crystals. What is the responsibility of the fathers of such children? How resolute are we in calling them to account? Did any of them even drive a nail in the new house for his children?

Probably no. We do not even bother to insist that they acknowledge, let alone support, their progeny, many of whom grow up to become the grist of national security concerns.

Parliament is supposed to set public policy and pass good laws. There has been a resolution on the Order Paper, pending for almost three years, calling for policy to be determined regarding the improvement of family life in Jamaica. But our thought priorities permit no time to discuss this, even as we spend hours haggling over bankrupt states of emergency, the supposed need for which is directly related to the deficiencies of personal relationships and brittle home life. This is skewed thinking.

DISMISS QUESTIONS

Every minister of national security regales us with frightening stories about ever-increasing numbers of pernicious gangs, but dismiss questions and consideration as to why men (and women now!) join gangs in the first place. Superficial and skewed thinking again.

Sadly, there is more. I remember well the consequences of the Suppression of Crime Act in the 1970s and beyond. That law so legitimised and conflated arbitrary and vicious police behaviour that its legacy infects the force to this day, long after that law was repealed. There is an unappreciated connection between brutal crime and lawless policing. But we can’t bring ourselves to face that.

With raging mental slavery still afflicting us worse that COVID-19, we reflexively act as if you can murder and that endless repression and an abridgement of human rights is the appropriate response to endemic social disorder. Governor Eyre and Baron von Ketelhodt still lives!

We should all be celebrating Justice Morrison’s blow for rights and freedom rather than having to endure the pathetic, defensive effort in the Senate last Friday to try to parse, deny and undermine it. Straight thinking demands that we vindicate the principle that it is a court, not a minister nor a policeman, who must determine whether and for how long the liberty of the subject can be abridged.

LEGITIMISE PREVENTATIVE DETENTION

The truth is that there are elements in the administration and, indeed, in the wider society who want to legitimise preventative detention. We don’t care about the Constitution. We are in power. You don’t see the people are ‘deddin’?

Skewed thinking (is that too mild a description of thought so foul?) leads ministers, sworn to uphold people’s rights, to cowardly resile from the correctness of their own earlier conclusions regarding INDECOM’s vital role in ensuring police accountability.

“Ronnie, you really expect us to go into an election with the police against us?”

Or the one who frontally and undeniably impugned the judiciary and the profession – a dangerous sentiment, itself an expression of lawlessness – but when called to book, claims misunderstanding of what was so clear as to be incapable of misunderstanding, rather than complete withdrawal and penitence.

Remember Donald Trump trying to walk back his comments about bleach being a cure for the “little sniffles” of COVID-19?

I understood, though could not support, Dr Chang’s reasoning some time ago, that suppressive measures like states of emergency were necessary for a short time to calm down violence before effective social amelioration would take place.

But look where we right are now. That reasoning is manifestly not working, as K.D. Knight pointed out to some “deaf-ears senators”. Violence is so rampant that the Government now seems to be reluctant to share the crime statistics from Fitz Jackson. This while the private sector tries to persuade the nation that bipartisan consensus on crime is just around the corner.

Skewed thinking in a ‘bungle’!

Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.