By Claude Gerald
The state of affairs at Her Majesty’s Prison, Montserrat is likely to give advocates of good governance a dose of dis-ease. What is conceptually considered as a place of rigid discipline and order has seemingly descended to levels which are symptomatic of our wider society where anything is tolerable and excusable.
Dear reader Montserrat is fast approaching a failed state where selfishness competes with selflessness and ignorance and myopia run amok in the seat of national decision making. This state speaks directly to the condition of our affairs as leadership is contagious, planting its being in the psyche of the governed and determining its progress or regress as an emerging society.
So that when Her Majesty’s Prison, Montserrat, a place of custodial protection and correction is attracting a reputation of ill repute and sexual perversion, social decay is plastered everywhere for all to see.
When immediate past Governor Davis and Premier Don Romeo, remained cool to the persistent allegation; with Romeo, typically ducking difficult situations, taking the path of least resistance and hoping that things manage themselves; at the same time pleading that the matter is kept positively under the radar; whilst the pathetically inept Queen’s representative, Governor Davis and other British officials close to him, instructed that a report is made to the Police; with him out of site at a distance; then it is clear that governance of this meandering territory is irresponsible, lifeless and rudderless. Remember that Governor Davis’s portfolio covered the Prison and the Police, areas that he fouled with a perpetual acrid stain.
Sink it in too that Premier Don Romeo is the chief of his Ministers and the leader of government’s contract with the people of Montserrat.
If it can be verified that female officers, married or otherwise, lose resistance on disproportionate night duty assignments and succumb to ravenous sexual aggression by male seniority – for fear of losing their jobs; and female officers’ promotion is held at bay for inordinately long periods, conditioned on the regular provision of sexual pleasures, Massa-day style; some ending unwanted pregnancies due to such encounters, an immediate and thorough investigation is mandatory.
Likewise if there is a management inspired cleanup campaign targeting all females; if some fishes cleverly puncture the trap and escape and now are subjected to consequential discrimination, it is time to review the management styles and philosophies of that institution.
If there are compliant officers, male or female who get promotions that are not within their capabilities, it will drag that important institution further into the mire, souring relations completely. If promotion is one man dependent, then safe guards need to be strengthened.
Given this developing scenario, it is past time to acknowledge that public employers, who continue to judge individuals at face value, as in national politics; without a clue of being able to search the soul of potential employees, ought to know that a person cannot give what is not in his being. Prison management must never be chosen based on the excuse of ‘a who we have’ and hope that good performance will naturally follow. It is a given that one’s performance is a function of the totality of the individual.
To what extent is it real that when resistance is sustained by the few; when stories of already exploited female officers are revealed to reluctant females; to impress, to beat the chest and to show off as being the kings of machismo, then if factual, the situation is perhaps beyond repair in the immediate term?
When modern communication gadgets are employed to express amorous and graphic desire, female officers are more than an endangered species. If needy female officers were to lose their sense of self esteem; living in pretense with their spouses; and wonder when it will end if ever; in a world scarce of employment with bread to put on the table, someone has to stand up, no matter the cost.
Once factual that prisoners are placed in a theatre of watching female officers masturbate and gyrate, it is the ultimate transgression that must be mended to restore the beliefs and ethos of a once proud institution of penal reformation.
And if the labour supply of prisoners is being exploited with the consent of prison management, to provide free service in rearing and slaughtering of livestock owned by top prison management, defenders of basic human rights are naturally affronted.
When female officers who quit prematurely and desire to, complain that ‘they not ready down there’ or actively seeking jobs not in their league, it reflects and disguises perhaps, a wider and deeper concern in the form widespread sexual harassment, that only the bolder ones can stomach bringing to the open.
With the attitude of officialdom the question is: who has the moral authority to lead on the conduct of a clean enquiry into that supposed hellish den, in which prisoners are now unheard of beneficiaries of the sexual bounty?
Who is going to crack the whip and shout for all to hear that enough is enough? Where does the present acting governor lie in this scheme of things; it is a portfolio of his substantively. Will he bury his head like an ostrich? Or will he pile a shopping list for the arriving governor and sleekly side step it as it may be uncomfortable to deal with? Sound thinking Montserratians know that the higher the office, the higher the financial compensation and as such the deeper the expectation of the individual in decision making.
Such Montserratians know that this Progressive Democratic Movement (PDM) administration is hopelessly hopeless to usher in initiatives that can halt the slide, which quite frankly has been in manifest for some time. There is nothing to minimally suggest that this one year old government understands, let alone demonstrates a capacity to govern wholesomely; to rationally and competently prioritize problems and systematically deal with them in the interest of our welfare.
This administration is spinning top in a mud farm and clowning around with serious issues. It has no presence. It is a virtual dollhouse. It is a recurring absurdity. It is loaded with idiocy.
Leadership that does not provide that anchor of confidence for its people and that firewall of protection of what is wholesome to institutional management, shall continue to flounder and misrepresent the convenient mandate given nearly a year ago; replacing the disreputable Movement for Change and Prosperity (MCAP), itself a bearer of misgovernment and social mayhem.
We as a conscious people ignore the lessons of this developing prison fiasco at our eternal peril.
Claude Gerald is a social commentator on Montserrat.Ceegee15@hotmail.com
