Public servants don't get to say 'anything'
Published:Tuesday | September 7, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
Your 'Letter of the day' of September 4, by Harold Malcolm, chiding Sergeant Raymond Wilson of the Jamaica Police Federation, seems to have attracted an inordinate amount of opposition from your readers online, as well as support for the policeman.
On reading this letter, it is a little more than obvious that there are two clear and distinct principles that are being totally ignored by the reading public. The first is that Sgt Wilson is part of the civil service of Jamaica, whose duty it is to support the Government (any government) in power at the time and carry out its dictates in the furtherance of good order and good governance in the society. The second is that Sgt Wilson is also a member of a paramilitary force, that is, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, with a chain of command and a hierarchy answerable only to the minister of national security.
The actual content of what Sgt Wilson said, in and of itself, is really beside the point. No one questions the right of anyone to express himself or herself freely in a free and democratic society. But when a member of a civil service starts criticising and castigating the very head of a government of which he is duty-bound to serve and the member of a police force starts leapfrogging the entire chain of command past the minister of national security, who is his boss, and starts firing barbs at the prime minister, then he is way out of line. There can be no doubt that Sgt Wilson should not only be reprimanded but should be fired immediately. Such a thing is totally unheard of in more ordered societies.
If Mr Wilson has political ambitions, then let him resign and go the way of the previous commissioner, Lucius Thomas.
I am, etc.,
LANCE ROBINSON