ICTJ in the News

May 18, 2006

Is Ian Boyne Being a Hype-o-crit?

The Jamaica Observer

"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." St John 3: 32

There is a lot of hype that surrounds our political leaders even as the situation with crime and violence continues to be critical. I have coined the word "hype-o-critical" to describe the senseless hero-worship I I see being meted out. Anyone who slavishly follows or panders to a politician (or anybody else for that matter) who has led one into a morass and left one there is a hype-o-crit.

Although closely related, a hypocrite and a hype-o-crit are not one and the same. A hypocrite deceives others for his own selfish ends. The hype-o-crit on the other hand, is a "wagonist" who deceives himself and others for the benefit of the individual who is the object of his adulation.

Ian Boyne is being nothing less than a hype-o-crit when he writes, "Edward Seaga has more respect and regard for black people than many of his opponents. He understands black people more than black people understand themselves." Caught up in the euphoria and hype of Mr Seaga being named a Fellow of the Institute of Jamaica, Mr Boyne momentarily lost his objectivity and balance.

In singling out Mr Seaga, I am not being politically biased.

There is a stadium in Arnett Gardens named in honour of his late nemesis, PNP housing minister Anthony Spaulding. After talking to people in the community old enough to remember his exploits, and reading the report of the late Justice Ronald Small concerning the forced eviction of residents from Rema in 1977, I am experiencing real difficulty attending events at the stadium. To do so would be to get caught up in the hype of the moment and lose sight of history's painful truths about his contribution to garrison politics. That would make me a hype-o-crit.

It may cause unease in some quarters, but the truth must be told about how we got to 1,674 murders in a year and the role played by garrison politics in creating the conditions.

Like many "Third World" political conflicts, the process of establishing garrisons was marked by atrocities. Trust between the governed and those who govern has been breached and is in need of repair.

Many scholars and clerics argue that ending impunity for political leaders involved in such atrocities is vital, not only to reduce the victims' anger and resentment, which might otherwise fuel a never-ending cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals but also to deter further atrocities. "Without justice," says Paul van Zyl of the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice, "you may be able to bring a temporary stop to the killing, but there is no sustainable peace."

The recently released "Roadmap to a Safe and Secure Jamaica", calls for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a preliminary step toward repairing the breach. The first such commission was set up in Chile in 1990. Others followed in quick succession in El Salvador, Chad, Haiti, South Africa (1995), Ecuador, Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Uruguay, Timor-Leste, Ghana, Panama, Congo, Liberia, and Morocco, the first in the Arab world. The South Africa Commission, chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu, has become the model.

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are grounded in the need to make restitution to victims and forgiveness for perpetrators, particularly where the atrocities were committed one generation (40 years) or less in the past, and so both sets of people - perpetrators and victims or their survivors - would still be alive with vivid recall of the atrocities. Truth telling encouraged by amnesties (so-called restorative justice) is a good alternative to adversarial justice practised by the recently established International Criminal Court located in the Hague before which the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was brought and to which former Liberian leader Charles Taylor is heading.

The evidence, although not entirely conclusive, is that Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been successful in revealing previously suppressed information concerning state-sponsored violence. They have assisted governments in regaining the moral authority to move hard against criminality, which is moral and spiritual at the root. Exposing the truth under the right circumstances and with the appropriate protection, takes the problem out of the present and puts it into the past with everyone being a lot wiser about how to avoid a repeat in the future.

In the recently concluded budget debate, the real debate seemed to centre on "who was there" when certain mistakes in economic policies were made. There was much finger pointing between government and Opposition. When it comes to garrison politics, I would invoke the words of Jesus: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

Now that the stone throwing and finger pointing have stopped, can we have the truth about the most sordid period in the modern political history of our country and thus create the conditions precedent to nation building?