POLITICS-JAMAICA: Leaders, Communities Grope for Peace

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Zadie Neufville

KINGSTON, Aug 16 2001 (IPS) - Tensions are high as governing and opposition party officials prepare for peace talks amid renewed gang and political violence in this capital city. At least 71 people have been killed since May.

The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) has capped weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the parties, announcing that long- awaited talks between the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and its main opponent, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) are scheduled to begin Friday.

A business association, the PSOJ is eager to quell the violence because West Kingston abuts the city’s commercial centre, portions of which have been abandoned.

The announcement came on the heels of fresh violence in West Kingston Wednesday. In one incident, pre-dawn attackers fire- bombed houses, forcing residents of the Denham Town area of Kingston to flee, in apparent retaliation for the death of a 76- year-old man during the political and gang violence that has plagued the city since May.

In another incident, police killed two men who allegedly shot at officers in nearby Arnett Gardens. Police said they recovered a handgun at the scene but residents told journalists the men had been unarmed and were shot to death after being searched.

While the political chiefs have been slow to start talks, community leaders and parliamentarians have begun their own dialogue.

Paul Burke, a PNP regional chairman, his JLP counterpart Desmond McKenzie, and their supporters from the affected communities met at a local hotel Tuesday. No major decision emerged from the three- hour talks but McKenzie conceded that his party had lost control of some of its supporters. Participants saw this as a step forward.

It is widely believed that local crime bosses, or ‘Dons’, have taken the place of politicians, and in some cases even police, in the inner city communities. One Denham Town resident who refused to be named said: “If you have a problem and you go to them, they will sort it out. When the police come in they (are) looking (for) war with the boys.”

The consensus is that fighting between communities will continue unless the Dons agree on a ceasefire. The next step in the local- level peace process will be to bring them to the treaty table.

Meanwhile, expectations are mixed for the talks between Prime Minister PJ Patterson and JLP leader Edward Seaga will begin their talks amid mixed expectations and despite festering differences over the appointment and terms of reference of a three-member commission of inquiry into last month’s flare-up of violence, in which 28 people died.

A local newspaper editorial summed up the mood thus: “There is no gainsaying that the majority of Jamaicans have lost faith in, and are certainly suspicious of, politics, political parties and the political leaders.”

Seaga had threatened to boycott the talks until differences over the commission of inquiry were settled but agreed Aug. 12 to meet Patterson on Friday for what the PSOJ says will be a series of encounters. The talks will be subject to a confidentiality clause between the parties and the PSOJ.

The inquiry panel’s members are Julius Alexander Isaac, a Grenadian-born retired jurist who was the first black person appointed to the Canadian Federal Court; Garnett Brown, a prominent agriculturalist and head of the Church of God in Jamaica; and retired Jamaican criminologist Hyacinthe Ellis.

Seaga objects to the selection of Brown, a former JLP official who left the party, and wants the inquiry limited to the Jul. 7-9 gun battles that began, he says, when police invaded Tivoli Gardens, his West Kingston stronghold.

Patterson, however, has insisted that the commissioners probe not only the gun battles but also events in the weeks leading to the flare-up. The inquiry thus could encompass questions of the ties between criminal enterprises and political parties as well as speculation that the opposition manipulated the situation for political gain in the run up to elections due by December 2002.

With up to 50 percent of the voting population not yet committed to any party, much rests on what happens in the next few weeks.