JAMAICA. COUNTRY’S TWO MAJOR PARTIES DISAGREE ON DEATH PENALTY

in the wake of calls for more steps to be taken in the fight against crime, Attorney-General and Justice Minister A.J. Nicholson, called on Jamaicans to pressure the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to start discussions with the government on the resumption of hanging. Nicholson, speaking at a function in the central parish of Clarendon, said the issue had become more urgent in light of the spiraling murder rate and public calls for the government to resume hanging.
He said the Patterson administration was committed to addressing the crime situation but was being hampered by the opposition's seeming unwillingness to discuss related issues such as hanging.
"We must come together in the fight against crime, it doesn't matter which party you or I belong to or what church we belong to, we have to come together," he said.
But in an immediate response, the JLP accused the Attorney-General of failing to fulfill a promise he made during a meeting between the parties earlier in the year.
Opposition spokesman on National Security, Derrick Smith, said Nicholson was yet to provide the JLP with information, which it requested in order to participate in bi-partisan talks on capital punishment.
"He's the one really that is holding up any sort of discourse between the opposition and the government," he said. "When we last met in March, Mr Nicholson was supposed to provide the opposition with some vital information in terms of persons and death row and some chronological development indicating exactly at what stage each individual case is and Mr Nicholson has not done and to hear him going some place in Jamaica and a statement about the opposition is ridiculous and just nonsense," Smith said.