Letter of the Day | Placing cart before the horse on Portmore

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I write further to The Gleaner editorial, ‘Portmore conundrum’, published on December 24. I note the comments on my highlighting the egregious gerrymandering of the constituency and municipal boundaries in Portmore.

Indeed, I did not then detain the gathering with much of the pertinent background to my raising the matter on that occasion, and wish to do so now as concisely as possible. As you are aware, the house being handed over resulted from the illegal sale of lands to several persons. I personally brought the matter of unplanned occupancy to both the SCJ Holdings and the prime minister. Regrettably, the prime minister placed the cart before the horse, and directed the demolition before proper investigation to identify the lawbreakers. Having realised the folly of his action, he sought to make amends to one of the nine persons whose structure he had demolished, as announced in Parliament the day before.

The recipient of the house, Ms Francis, and the location is set at the centre of the gerrymandering already commenced by the prime minister by way of a draft bill circulated. On November 20, the leader of the Opposition wrote to the prime minister, and raised concerns. To date, over a month after, not even the courtesy of an acknowledgement of the letter has been received. Second, from November 21, as member of parliament, I attempted to raise the very same concerns to the prime minister by way of tabled questions. This was denied by the Speaker of the House, Mrs Juliet Holness. Yes, I had enough, and more than enough. As the editorial correctly highlighted, the matter raised by me is not of a parochial nature, but the slaughtering of our now-sacred national democratic practices, and more.

It was a painful challenge to sit at the handover and hear the prime minister claim that the area to be cut off from South St Catherine is unoccupied. That area of the Hellshire Hills, which he claimed full knowledge of, will not be cut off in the proposed new boundaries. Further, the prime minister ought to know that constituency boundaries are not determined by land areas, occupied or not, but by population count! The area intended to be cut off was also clearly stated publicly by his Cabinet colleague Minister Everald Warmington. Why has the prime minister neglected or refused to reject the statement of Minister Warmington?

I did not make mention of the meritless basis of the proposal to make Portmore a parish as the editorial concurred. Rather, I exclusively spoke to the initiated clear breaches by the administration. On the occasion of the handover, I publicly commended the house recipient in having some remedy to her unfortunate experience of seeing her partially built house demolished. All of Jamaica is set to become a victim of the Government’s breaches, in much the same way that the recipient, Ms Francis, was of other lawbreaker(s). Ms Francis is one of nine persons similarly affected, but the only one in receipt of a house, for which a national ceremony was held.

FITZ JACKSON

Member of Parliament

South St Catherine