Retroactive law immoral
Published:Sunday | October 7, 2018 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Well-thinking people, and particularly thousands of vehicle owners who for decades were illegally harassed and deprived of money by the Transport Authority, will commend your Gleaner editorial of October 4, 2018, challenging the constitutionality of a new law passed by the Senate.
This retroactive law makes it impossible for hard-working Jamaicans to recover millions - perhaps billions - of dollars stolen from them, in effect, by an agent of the very government that now frames this law. How ironic that so-called independent Jamaica, in the name of the Queen of England's 'Most Gracious Majesty', is conniving in such moral atrocity against its own people. It is nothing short of gross corruption.
Many may recall how Jamaica righteously condemned the Brits when England refused, point blank, to pay reparation for slavery on the basis that (according to the Queen, inter alia) "while slavery was horrible, it was lawful at the time, and therefore not a crime to be compensated".
Indeed, if criminals made the law, crime would be legal. And we all know how well the criminal colonials suppressed so-called 'natives' here and throughout their then empire.
It matters somewhat, though, that Britain's wicked and shameful deeds over 400 years were not committed against their own people, but against other nationals.
Today, Jamaica's elected officials are wilfully screwing their own people for filthy lucre. And the Senate has tried to justify their dirty deeds with retroactive law. How immoral can you get?
As Miss Lou would say, "Cock mout' kill cock." Election a come!
GLEN MCFARLANE