We are a free nation, Mr Tapia
Published:Thursday | November 5, 2020 | 12:08 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
This is an open letter to Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
Jamaica’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Curtis Ward, did not mince words in saying we should have acted long ago in rejecting Ambassador Donald Tapia’s very rude interference into our internal affairs. We don’t look like a sovereign nation when we allow foreigners to come into our country and interfere into our nation’s business. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kamina Johnson Smith should have acted earlier in the repelling of Tapia’s interference into our national affairs. We have to look at it from the standpoint that, if we had done that in US, we would have been deported, if we had no papers, just like Mr Tapia. We have to protect our people, and basically that is the duty of the prime minister, to act swiftly in dispelling any form of unwelcome resistance to our sovereignty.
I recall in 1980, almost 40 years to the day in fact, the Cuban ambassador in Jamaica, Ulysses Estrada, was given marching orders by then Prime Minister Edward Phillip George Seaga to leave our shores and go back to his country of birth. This was with immediate effect after the general election on October 30, 1980. Not because US is such a powerful country, we should send back Mr Tapia to his country of birth, in similar fashion, for interfering into our internal affairs. It is not because US is such a friend of ours that we are going to make them intimidate us, on our own shores. Without any form of excuses, we should send back Donald Tapia to where he belongs. In fact, it was the incumbent JLP which made that drastic move with Mr Estrada.
We should be able to take 5G (fifth generation) technology from any country on planet Earth which makes 5G, which we deemed appropriate, whether it is China, Germany, South Korea, UK or the US. We are a free nation from 1838, with the reading of the Emancipation proclamation. In fact, we even got some more relief with the proposal for independence in 1962, and we got the status of internal self-government a little earlier in 1944. This is why we should lobby quickly for the total extrication of ourselves from the monarchy and become a republic with distinction. We must never, ever, ever, ever allow any nation to intervene into our internal affairs. Mr Prime Minister, I expect you to protect us as minister of defence. We are friends of the USA, but wi a nuh fren inna dem way deh.
PARIS TAYLOR