Patterson calls for EAC model to fight crime

Former Prime Minister P. J. Patterson has recommended a mechanism fashioned off the former Electoral Advisory Commission (EAC) to help stem the crime wave.

The EAC, lauded for revamping Jamaica’s then notoriously corrupt electoral system, has morphed into the Electoral Commission of Jamaica.

“We desperately need to unleash the EAC model to remove all partisan contentions to destroy the terrible monster of crime and violence,” Patterson said Thursday afternoon while addressing the launch of a book, Elections & Governance: Jamaica on the Global Frontier, written by Professor Errol Miller, at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Regional Centre at Mona.

The publication is the first of a two-part series tracing the emergence of Jamaican society and its governance institutions by Miller, a veteran educator, who also served as chairman of the commission for 12 years between 2000 and 2012.

“We cannot discard a template which combines non-partisan and professional leadership with the active engagement of political acumen, where the legislative capacity is vested, as the best vehicle to secure our salvation from the terror of criminal subjugation,” Patterson said of the commission.

Patterson, during whose prime ministership violent crime soared between 1992 and 2006, noted that what was spawned in 1979 as the EAC emerged when confidence in Jamaica’s electoral system faced a crisis.

“Our political leaders realised we were in danger of going over the precipice, so political will, combined with academic and human capital, had to be invested to avert the destruction of our society,” recalled the former prime minister, who is now statesman-in-residence at The UWI’s P.J. Patterson Institute for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy.

“The Electoral Commission which exists today is a shining star on the global frontier. It has been tried, tested, and proven. We the people of Jamaica have designed and established a system which could well point the way, even for developed countries, to demonstrate how threats can be averted in vintage democracies by any persistent refusal to accept the legitimate verdict of electoral defeat.”

Noting that crime, violence, and social order have escalated to what he described as cataclysmic levels, Patterson pointed out that Miller’s book provides invaluable insights on how governance in the country could be further advanced to “hedge against aggression”. He said the publication advocates the essence of governance within a tripartite framework that involves Jamaica’s political parties and civil society.

Jamaica has recorded more than 1,360 murders in 2022, a surge of almost seven per cent year-on-year.

That spike sparked the imposition of states of emergency in seven parishes Tuesday in a bid to rein in crime ahead of the Christmas holidays.

The emergency measure will expire after 14 days unless the parliamentary Opposition assents to an extension with at least one vote in the Senate.

National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang said in an Editors’ Forum Wednesday that the Holness administration has reservations about the imposition of back-to-back SOEs to circumvent the Opposition, but he emphasised that doing so would be legal.

While acknowledging that routine SOEs without Opposition support would be contrary to good governance, Chang cautioned, however, on Thursday that if the security chiefs insisted on the measure, the Government would have to respond.

Meanwhile, Patterson has repeated the call for the teaching of history and civics to be made mandatory in the school curriculum.

“In the presence of our vice chancellor, who is also head of the Caribbean Examinations Council, I make this urgent plea: The time has come for our universities, our tertiary institutions, our secondary and primary schools to make it compulsory for our students to know from where we came, what has informed the shape of our multiracial society, in order to determine where we want to go,” the former prime minister said.

editorial@gleanerjm.com