Don't play politics with beheadings, Blair tells parties

Anastasia Cunningham, Senior Gleaner Writer

Political Ombudsman and chairman of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), Herro Blair, is condemning politicians who would seek to use the gruesome beheadings of Jamaicans - a wave that has gripped the nation over the past week - to score political points.

Speaking with The Gleaner yesterday, Blair said he wanted to make it clear that this was no time for either party to play politics.

While condemning the barbaric beheadings, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) have taken the opportunity to snipe at each other over their historic ties to gangs.

On Sunday, the JLP took aim at the PNP in a press release after the latter party's general secretary and spokesman on national security, Peter Bunting, announced that the pnp had dissociated itself from the Clansman gang, which is said to be responsible for the decapitations in Lauriston, St Catherine.

Bunting had said that despite the fact that the gangs operated from the party's stronghold, it did not have any control over them.

Murder rate threat

JLP Public Relations Chairman Andrew Holness subsequently said Bunting ought to revise his position, as the Clansman gang was threatening to increase the country's murder rate.

Also on Sunday, at a political meeting in Myersville, St Elizabeth, Government parliamentarian Ernest Smith declared that Bunting "needs to come and tell the nation whether or not the beheading of our people by a PNP gang is part of policy of the action of the PNP to destabilise the Government of the Jamaica Labour Party."

Yesterday, the PNP fired back in a release, calling the JLP members' comments regrettable and irresponsible, and noting that their actions displayed "the depravity in Jamaican politics".

"The JLP representatives seek to attempt to create some far-fetched association between the horrific crimes and the PNP by referencing the suspected perpetrators as being PNP supporters because they are believed to be from communities reputed to be traditionally supportive of the PNP," the opposition party said.

In its statement, the party also said the "PNP is proud to have been the party in government which put in place the technology and international information sharing arrangement which resulted in the arrest of alleged Shower Posse leader, reputed drug smuggler and suspected illegal gun importer Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, an arrest which effectively crippled the most feared and extensive national and international criminal network based in the JLP enclave of Tivoli Gardens."

The release added: "The public is aware, too, that it is not the PNP which for nine months attempted to frustrate Coke's extradition to face justice in the United States. Nor was it at a PNP conference that there was a fatal dispute between gang members said to have been providing backstage 'security'."

Yesterday, Blair told The Gleaner that, despite the fact that elections are around the corner, "nobody will gain or score political points out of this, and I condemn anybody, whoever that person is, who is trying to make political points out of such brutal murders in this nation."

He said it was time for the country to unite and continue to arrest "this force, this demon that is trying to cripple the nation".

anastasia.cunningham@gleanerjm.com