Some years ago, when the crime situation was a far cry from what it is today, a High Court judge stated in open court that the scales of justice are being dangerously tilted in favour of the criminal. Not long after, another High Court judge, presumably experiencing a bout of judicial frustration, surmised, in open court, "We living in jail." Predictably, our "mocking pretenders," in the political arena, have apparently mastered the art of talking from both sides of the mouth and neither side of the brain, and manage to profess that they're neither for nor against the death penalty for even the most heinous acts of homicide perpetrated against hapless and helpless victims.
Naturally, they'd hasten to claim that their position (or is it non-position?) has been grossly distorted and maliciously misrepresented. But I don't have a dog in the hunt. However, there seems to be a growing perception (not confined to the hysterical, as some might choose to think) that the law-abiding can be excused for feeling that they're virtually facing potentially serious harm, at any moment, at the hand of some criminal element, "without the right of appeal, stays of execution," and certainly without exemption from cruel and unusual punishment. I'm not unaware that some who fancied themselves as experts favoured us with the "revelation" that the source of criminal activity in these parts was due to "tit-for-tat" killings among the various gangs and "we the people" have little to fear, except being the possible casualties of "collateral damage."
By that typically absurd logic, I suppose, the supposedly mutual extermination in gangland could operate effectively as "a self-cleansing criminal oven" which could rid us of the criminal element, if not criminality, once and for all. Unbelievably, one fellow, in some form of assumed authority (not in jest), once suggested that exposure to ballroom dancing might have a favourable effect on the criminal mind and ipso facto criminality itself. My own theory is less esoteric, as I'm of the view that politicians in these parts-and that does not exclude Jamaica-are unable to conceive that the politicisation of criminality also entails the criminalisation of politics, to the detriment of the society as a whole.
As far as those politicians are concerned, it seems to me that all they require are the self-delusionary euphemisms of "community leaders" labels to allow them to consort and exchange favours with what may be generally regarded as unsavoury societal elements and on occasion wining and dining them at posh establishments under the guise of "smoking the peace pipe" and promoting harmony among the criminal gangs. Today, crime and criminality are highly organised, widespread and may even threaten to overwhelm systems not designed to control and contain them. Our justice systems, as we know them, were in my view never designed to come to grips with highly organised crimes and criminal cartels with extensive reaches and their own swift unorthodox protocols of rough and ready street justice.
The Mexican situation is no illusion. Specifically, when I observe the puerile, disingenuous and obviously hypocritical antics of some of our politicians, where grappling with crime and criminal activity on our behalf is concerned, I can only ask God not only to put a hand but both feet as well. It's not in my nature to be disrespectful to the higher power so I'd refrain from suggesting where on those feet certain anatomies should be firmly planted. Now, moving from the patentently deaf and seemingly dumb responses re: the current situation, I'd like to suggest that although justice is traditionally portrayed as a blindfolded lady, she's neither blind nor dumb but the blindfold is intended to depict impartiality and not blindness to social reality.
Where some of our politicians are concerned, they couldn't care less whether our system of justice wends its way to being manoeuvred and/or manipulated into a state of statuesque immobility and paralysis, as we become overwhelmed by their bogus concern for selective so-called "rights" to cloud their very real selfish, hidden, political agenda, at our expense. It's hardly a secret that securely embedded in our political culture are the political expediency of "opportunistically opposing for opposing sake and the blind being misled by self-styled, self-serving Pied Pipers." I suppose that it's no skin off politicians' necks whether their sometimes infantile and simian antics, wittingly or otherwise, send loud signals to the criminal elements that they have "permission to mash up the place." Can't imagine what we've done to deserve that lot.
On second thought, perhaps we deserve them if we're the suckers for punishment that they take us for, with all their spurious arguments. All I can say is, "What's fun for school children is certain death for crapaud." Indeed, crime is a political football for rookie politicians. It's clear as daylight that criminals are laughing at us and every criminal that's laughing one wonders how many victims are crying because of state-of-the-art political masquerading in some quarters, playing Russian roulette with personal and public safety. I can well anticipate the defence that "if de priest could play, who is we?" As Chalkie once sang, "Yuh cyah beat a Trinidadian when it comes to avoiding serious issues." Gypsy also comments on our political innovativeness. For example, "How do we deal with a political scandal?" "Elementary, my dear Watson," as Sherlock Holmes might say, "defuse it with an even bigger scandal." Play wid us, nuh!