JUMBIE JAMBOREE

WHERE DO JUMBIES GO?

Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood


I want to know where jumbies go. I want to know where jumbies go because I want to find them. I want to find them because I have a job for all the jumbies of all the fallen victims of crime in this country. I don’t have any jumbie money to pay them but I suspect they will rest in peace after they do the job I have for them.

A woman is shot dead in broad daylight and the next kneejerk, tear-jerk thing I hear my government talk about is the death penalty. State sponsored jumbies; if they can catch them and give them a fair, timely trail. Anyone who has ever stolen anything, from sugar cake and soda pop, to other people’s money; anyone who has committed a crime; anyone who has ever done anything wrong; anyone who bears a head above the shoulders; must know that all criminals have one thing in common: the central belief that they will not get caught.

How can we live in a modern society where the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force crawls out for the occasional crisis, and parade, but otherwise sits and awaits an invasion from outer space? All the while, we are being regularly and constantly invaded by body snatchers on earth. Absolute vodka.

The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is part of the Regional Security System (RSS). The web site for the RSS states, "The Regional Security System (RSS) is a "hybrid" Organization, in that its security forces comprise both Military and Police personnel who remain under the command of their respective forces. It was created out of a need for collective response to security threats, which were impacting on the stability of the region in the late 70’s and early 80’s".


The RSS has been engaged in a wide range of operations, from the 1983 uprising in Grenada to the 2010 operations in Haiti, including hurricanes and other real and potential disasters in the region.

The Mission Statement of the RSS reads: "To ensure the stability and well-being of Member States through mutual cooperation, in order to maximise regional security in preserving the social and economic development of our people".


In response to the latest, brazen murder, the local arm of the RSS is being called out for joint stop and search operations, etc. We have done this before. Criminals may do stupid things but criminals are not stupid. The time has long passed for the re-engineering of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force so that there is a regular, visible presence of appropriately dressed and equipped security personnel punctuating this entire land. Violent crime and murder are the real, manmade destabilizing disasters that are threatening the social and economic development of our people. The invasion is here, clear and present.

To do anything less than to redeploy, retool and retrain the local arm of the RSS and indeed the entire RSS is to play into the hands of criminals. The hybrid force that the RSS refers to must be a regular, common and constant active feature of national security. The kneejerk reactionary call for the death penalty must be superseded by clear thinking. Think like a criminal, and you might not get caught out, again and again.

I want to put the politicians in this government and in the opposition on notice that if the local Defence Force is not restructured to effect a regular hybrid force suitable to our needs, and if anything untoward happens to me or my family or my friends, I have an army of jumbies (including mine) ready to hunt and haunt every single last one of them and chase them to the hottest part of hell, where the burning flames are neither red nor blue; just eternally hot, hot, hot.