If 31,000 people turned up for the 5,000 advertised Special Reserve Police jobs, what does that say about the Government's unemployment statistics? Forget about that for a minute and digest Jack Warner's flippant response to return to the Cabinet to increase the SRP recruitment from 5,000 to 10,000 in response.
Why? To what end? Is the Police Service the new URP? And if the intention is to dole out more state jobs, why not 5,000 special reserve nurses for the five national hospitals and clinics? Why the rush to militarise the unemployed? Is it that as SRPs serve at the Police Commissioner's pleasure and could be fired without the need for pesky tribunals and Police Service Commissions, it creates an environment for a more controllable police force? To what end?
And why would we need to do an end run around the Police Service Commission if we had no intention of circumventing the rules and regulations that govern the Police Service? It is my view that there is nothing accidental about this development and we as a people would do well to resist a situation where we have more "special police" than regular police as that situation allows for far more political interference in our service than the Constitution wants to tolerate.
We need to reject this and I am calling on all citizens to speak out before we wake up to find ourselves in the latest version of a Caribbean banana republic, at the mercy of King Jack and his SRP army. Write to your MP, the Prime Minister, the President and to the media, calling on the Government and the Cabinet to reject this development out of hand before it becomes a regrettable fait accompli.
Phillip Alexander
Via e-mail