Give up gunmen, Crawford tells Golding

FIREBRAND PRESIDENT of the People's National Party Youth Organisation (PNPYO), Damion Crawford, yesterday took aim at Prime Minister Bruce Golding, calling for him to present to Crime Stop the names of the criminals he was once associated with.

In a short but spirited presentation to Comrades who turned out at the National Arena yesterday for the party's 72 annual conference, Crawford challenged Golding to divulge the names to the police.

"Mr Golding says he was associated with gunmen. The PNPYO wants to know when Crime Stop is going to get that list that he was associated with?" Crawford queried.

In the late 1990s, after Golding had parted company with the Jamaica Labour Party and formed the National Democratic Movement, he declared that he had rejected garrison politics.

On his road-to-Damascus transformation, Golding had confessed that he was once associated with gunmen in his earlier political career but had turned over a new leaf.

"I was associated with gunmen," Golding said in 1999, adding, "but being associated with gunmen is not a criminal offence."

Golding had said that, under the old-style politics in which he was involved, gunmen served a function in his former Central St Catherine constituency by keeping supporters of the People's National Party out of the area.