'No to terrorists'
Published:Monday | August 16, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
CENTRAL KINGSTON Member of Parliament Ronald Thwaites has urged his constituents to rebuke criminals, irrespective of whether they are associated with the People's National Party (PNP) which he represents.
"The PNP doesn't need any connection with any criminal to win this election. The PNP must distance itself from any banditry, from any terrorism, from any bad man. We do not need it," Thwaites said yesterday.
The MP was making reference to the murder of eight persons in Tredegar Park, St Catherine, on Friday morning which the police say was committed by the Clansman gang.
Clansman falls predominantly in the PNP's Sharon Hay-Webster's South Central St Catherine constituency. The gang is said to be aligned to the party.
The police have linked past bloodbaths in St Catherine to the Spanish Town-based gang.
Yesterday, Thwaites told his constituents that criminals will only retard the growth of the country and urged that thugs not be accommodated.
"We in central Kingston have put the link between politics and crime aside. We don't need any such association," Thwaites said.
He told Comrades in attendance he was an informant and that he would tell the police anything he hears about criminals.
"Tell them and everybody, we nuh business wid dem," Thwaites said in reference to the Clansman gang.
Dudus drama
The MP could not resist the temptation of jabbing the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, for his handling of the Christopher 'Dudus' Coke extradition.
Thwaites, pointing to evidence of criminal enterprise in Tivoli Gardens, which Golding represents in Parliament, said, "There is nowhere in the PNP that has something like what was uncovered in Tivoli Gardens and which we knew all along.
"There is no leader of the PNP who is going to stake his or her political capital on Dudus in the way that the prime minister of Jamaica and the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party did," Thwaites said.