The crisis in sections of   Jamaica at this time is but a symptom of one of the main sources of crime in this country – narco-trafficking. We need all hands on deck to tackle this problem in an intelligence-driven way and not through brute force which could serve to strengthen the resolve of narco-traffickers and the citizenry they have won over.

They cut across party lines and the leadership of the JLP and the PNP know this and appear helpless to tackle the problem whether because of  lack of financial resources or  lack of political will, borne out of fear of  losing elections.

However in this, perhaps our greatest crisis, we have good people on both sides of the political divide and in civil society and we need to utilise them.

The present crisis presents golden opportunities to truly begin to tackle the problem.

From my vantage point as a journalist of thirty-seven years who understands the issue, I am suggesting three possible solutions which require courage and innovative thinking: a coalition government comprising the best minds of the JLP and the PNP; getting overseas help from an intelligence agency such as the Israeli Mossad which has tremendous experience in dealing with insurgencies; getting financial help from our major trading partners to fill the vacuum left by the clean-up of the drug enclaves.

The JLP administration needs to display the courage to invite someone like their political opponent Dr. Peter Phillips to head up the Security Ministry and to invite one of our brilliant communicators in the private sector to take over the information ministry.

We have tried with the Americans and the British in our security apparatus. However we have not tried arguably the best intelligence agency in the world - the Mossad. That agency could train good Jamaican intelligence operatives and thus help the country to deal effectively with the spectre of crime in a preventative manner and not the kind of knee-jerk responses which have not worked over decades.

For us to rescue a generation of Jamaicans and re-focus their minds on  nation-building, family life we need to fill the vacuum left after  the ‘Dons’ and ‘protectors’  have been removed.

When the Americans paid Turkish farmers in the late nineteen seventies to eighties to abandon growing poppy and go into legitimate business activities, it enjoyed limited success.

Jamaica does not have the financial resources to do this. Funding for a similar program could be sourced though our trading partners such as the Americans, the European Union and possibly the Japanese.  Well funded and executed social intervention programs may well be the way to win back the hearts and minds of   thousands of Jamaicans who have been led astray. We can’t afford to leave a vacuum!

To effectively execute what should be a sustained five-year program, the administration needs a communication Czar – not necessarily someone from the bowels of politics but one who can skilfully craft messages subliminally and otherwise to reach the people.

Without this kind of creative thinking, all the small economic gains we have made in a very trying period would have come to nought and my generation would have failed young Jamaicans.

Those are my thoughts as a concerned nationalistic Jamaican journalist who loves his country