Oh no, Ms Leah Tavares-Finson
We were dismayed to read Ms Leah Tavares-Finson's take on Mr
Christopher Coke, if only because we expected better from a student of
the political sciences.According to Sunday's edition of our Style Observer, Ms Taveres-Finson, the daughter of Government Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, premised her defence of Mr Coke, who is currently facing drug and gun-running charges in the United States, on the social benefits that he allegedly brought to the community of Tivoli Gardens.
Coming as it did so many weeks after evaporation of the myth
surrounding Mr Coke's inviolability, we marvel that Ms Tavares-Finson
has still not come to realise the significance of the past 10 or so
months.
That she could really be pinning the title of hero on a man who --
despite being deemed innocent until proven guilty -- cannot even, by
the most liberal subjective standard, fit into contemporary definition
of the word, is truly amazing.
Ms Tavares-Finson's observation that Mr Coke has been able to do for
Tivoli Gardens what "so many politicians can only dream of
accomplishing", is as serious an indictment of her own mentality as it
is of the rest of us who have for so long condoned such low standards
in governance.
For if it is really true that Mr Coke's reign over Tivoli Gardens
constitutes the ideal, shouldn't we all be looking to replicate and
perpetuate donmanship? Shouldn't we be taking Ms Tavares-Finson's
advice to 'leave Presi alone'? Shouldn't we be apologising to Prime
Minister Bruce Golding for our strident criticism of his resistance to
the United States' extradition request for Mr Coke, and for insisting
that he come clean on the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips affair?
The truth is that the reality of which Ms Tavares-Finson speaks is
simply incompatible with the universal tenets of good governance.
Tivoli Gardens is a community within Jamaica which is supposed to be
governed by a duly elected government. To posit otherwise is folly of
the most pitiful order.
As we understand it, garrisons of the nature of Tivoli Gardens are not
representative of the paradises that some people are trying to make
them out to be.
Horror stories involving the forced submission of teenaged girls -- and
boys -- to the sexual perversions of dons are being painfully
documented by people like Ms Betty Ann Blaine, a tireless children's
rights advocate.
We have yet, as a society, to afford due respect and attention to the
cry that Ms Blaine and others like her have been making on behalf of
this most vulnerable section of society.
We are sure that they too have opinions on this most emotional topic.
It would be enlightening to hear them.
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