PNP must build case against Coke

Robert Buddan, Contributor

Peter Bunting, shadow minister of national security for the Opposition People's National Party (PNP), has called on the Jamaican police to begin gathering information and evidence, much of which is available to United States prosecutors, to bring a case locally against confessed criminal kingpin, Christopher Coke.

Mr Bunting said that criminals like Coke, dangerous as they are, can eventually serve short sentences and return to the streets of Jamaica and to their constituency havens with the usual political protection to rebuild their criminal organisations. We should campaign to have them locked up for a long, long time.

Mr Bunting should go further. He should commit the PNP, of which he is general secretary, to bringing Coke to justice for Jamaicans just as Americans have brought him to justice for crimes against Americans. Mr Bunting, who I know is non-compromising on crime and violence, should commit his party to a policy and to leadership in building evidence against criminals, especially those who have confessed, and including those who would have served time abroad, in order to deliver local justice to the people of Jamaica.

I say this because the news media give the impression that Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds is being circumspect about the whole thing. They might have interpreted him wrongly. I hope so. But one newspaper began its report saying, "The Jamaican police yesterday (Tuesday) refused to commit to a criminal probe against Christopher 'Dudus' Coke."

We cannot send this kind of signal to our people from leaders who are at the very heart of our criminal justice system. It raises alarm at a time when there is a Government in power that had done everything it could to keep Coke from justice. This is not a time for a government that lacks the will to prosecute criminals nor for policing that sounds faint-hearted.

Safety, Security and Justice

One of the key pillars of the new PNP Progressive Agenda is, indeed, safety, security and justice. The Coke case is a test case for this pillar. Mr Bunting is a leading spokesman for this pillar. His compatriot, the former minister of justice who is now shadow minister for foreign affairs and foreign trade, A.J. Nicholson, should be teaming up with Bunting to pursue information and evidence that could be used to prosecute Coke in Jamaica. They should use the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, as Mr Bunting suggested the police could, to do so. If Deputy Commissioner Hinds feels the Government will not cooperate so that the police can go all-out against Coke, this is all the more reason for the PNP to put pressure on the Government to give the police a free hand to do their job if it cannot give the cops full support.

Mr Bunting, Mr Nicholson, Mr Mark Golding (the PNP's shadow minister for justice) and party leader Mrs Portia Simpson Miller should ask Mr K.D. Knight and Mr Patrick Atkinson to use their expert knowledge of the case which they demonstrated so forcefully before that deaf commission of enquiry. Indeed, they should speak to the police commissioner and Mr Hinds to seek clarity about what the police want in order to do their job free from fear and interference.

This is not just a police matter, anyway. It is a matter of restoring our national reputation, decriminalising our constituencies, bringing safety, security and justice to the Jamaican people, attacking 'dons' and their criminal enterprises, distancing parties from gangs and demonstrating to the international community that we are going to be the toughest we can be on crime. Never mind the cynics.

Alliance against Crime

I would hope that the PNP can roll out action movements working from the principles it enunciated in its Progressive Agenda.

Jamaicans at home and overseas should make this alliance against crime. Such an alliance can get information and evidence from police, citizens and prosecutors in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

Members of the diaspora can help Jamaica. They have legal and policing skills, experience, organisation, networks, political clout, and knowledge of the home and foreign systems. In fact, it is the violence and crime perpetrated by people like Coke that have caused many of these Jamaicans to leave in fear of their lives and their children's safety. Here is their chance to get back at these criminals and to claim back Jamaica. Maybe they can retire in Jamaica, after all, when peace and civility are restored.

It was PNP President Michael Manley who, after all, had warned the country back in 1990 of the great danger that drug and gun traffickers posed to the small and vulnerable democracies of the Caribbean.

It was the PNP, after all, that entered into extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties and memoranda of understanding, beginning in the early 1990s, that brought Lester and Christopher Coke and the latter's partner, Vivian Blake, down. The PNP had further established the National Committee on Tribalism in 1996, and the National Committee on Crime and Violence in 2001. That was the party that brought in supposed PNP dons like Donald 'Zeeks' Phipps and Donovan 'Bulbie' Bennett, among other big men of crime. It was that party's efforts that allowed Dudus to be investigated and for investigators to amass so much information against him that he had to confess.

But now Mr Bunting has raised the spectre that Coke might be released in as little as 10 years. He will likely be deported. He will still be young enough to resume his career in crime. He might even be welcomed back to his haven. His political friends might secure safe haven, full protection, business contracts, warehouse channels for imported guns and drugs, and they might hire him in an organisational capacity to support political candidates who would protect him in turn.

Bunting's Case

At a press conference last Tuesday, Mr Bunting highlighted the arsenal that the Jamaican authorities would have should they find the common will to pursue the case against Coke: his guilty plea, substantial information possessed by the American prosecutors, and witnesses who were prepared to testify. There is, Bunting reminded us, a Jamaican case to be made.

Bunting said: "The US government sought to admit cooperating witness testimony that Coke murdered at least two individuals in Tivoli Gardens for failing to repay narcotics-related debts. In the case of one of these victims, Coke killed him with a chainsaw while he was tied down! Even in instances where he wasn't personally present at the time of execution, our law contemplates the offence of conspiracy and recognises the role of an aider and abettor."

And those who want to clean up Jamaica's politics should hear also that: "The US government's motion outlines that among Coke's 'soldiers'' responsibilities was participating in election-related activities - including motivating members of surrounding communities to support particular candidates by intimidation. It provides an independent and explicit link to the importance of Coke and the Shower Posse to the JLP's election organisation, and explains their unwillingness to have Coke extradited."

A PNP-led action movement for justice would demonstrate the value of its Progressive Agenda.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and robert. buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.