Mr Bunting’s dark night of the soul

KINGSTON, Jamaica - MR Peter Bunting, the national security minister, might have used his "dark night of the soul" description out of the true context meant by 16th-century Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic, Saint John of the Cross, whose poem of the same title speaks of the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. But the reaction, some might say overreaction, to his speech is not about his wrong use of the term. One gets the sense that there is some baying for political blood in some quarters of Jamaica and, in that context, we suspect, there is a bit of overreaction to Mr Bunting's statement to the 13th Annual Prayer and Thanksgiving Service for the Security Forces of Jamaica at the Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville. Having read the full text of the minister's statement as published in yesterday's edition of the Observer, we think it is clear that Mr Bunting was not waving the white flag of surrender to criminals, as some have accused him.