Speaking after the swearing-in of Col. MacMillan as both Senator and Minister of National Security at King's House this morning (May 13), Mr. Golding said the new Minister is no superman or miracle worker. He said Minister MacMillan brings to the job a tremendous amount of experience having served 30 years in the security forces of this country. He said Minister MacMillan brings to the post, an understanding of the multiplicity of issues that have to be grappled with and the way in which many seemingly unrelated factors do in fact come together to pose the greatest challenges the country faces at this time .

Prime Minister Golding said the appointment of Col. MacMillan is in no way an indictment on the part of Minister Derrick Smith who will now assume the portfolio of Minister of Mining and Telecommunications while the Honourable Clive Mullings will be the Minister of Energy. Mr. Golding said Minister Smith is not well and would be given time off to recuperate so that he can assume the new responsibilities he has been assigned.

Mr. Golding said Minister MacMillan is going to be called upon to provide policy leadership to the Ministry and that is going to require his moving from the operational role that he previously played to one of policy direction and leadership. 'It is a challenging job, a difficult job that he is being called upon to perform', Mr. Golding said.

Lamenting the state of the nation and the task facing the police, Mr. Golding supported an observation made by a retiring police officer in which he said the police have been given a rotten society to police. He said the country was looking at the manifestation of the failings of our school system, the homes, where our children are not being brought up with an understanding of what is right and what is wrong or the need to respect authority.

'When all of this produces citizens who are dysfunctional, disoriented, marginalized, and alienated,... citizens who find no reason to invest any hope in the social order that exists because they feel that social order has been so unfair and unjust to them and so are not prepared to accept the values and the norms of the society, it is the police who have to now deal with all of this legacy of dysfunctionality ', Mr. Golding said..

The Prime Minister said any meaningful, lasting, impact on the level of criminality in Jamaica is going to have to address the root causes. "It will require not just the Ministry of Security and its various agencies but a multiplicity of both private and public sector agencies that will have to come together in a way never seen before in order to tackle the problem at its root and to address the manifestation of the problem".

Mr. Golding said he would be meeting tomorrow with a number of government agencies that impact in any form on the quality of social life. He said the criminals are going to be made to understand that there are law enforcement agencies and they are going to do their job. He appealed to the people of Jamaica to not let the discussion now be about how quickly Col. MacMillan will fail, but about what we can do as a people to make sure that all of us succeed in the fight against crime.