AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PARLIAMENT OF JAMAICA, TO THE SENATE, TO THE PRIME MINISTER, TO EVERY COUNCILLOR, EVERY MP, AND EVERY PERSON WHO HAS EVER DARED TO SPEAK IN THE NAME OF THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE
Kingston, Jamaica. May 2026.
To those entrusted with the mandate of this nation,
I want to begin by telling you something you may not expect to hear from someone my age. I love Jamaica. Not in the way people love a flag or a song or a t-shirt they wear on independence day. I love this country the way you love something you are genuinely afraid of losing. The way you love something that has already given you so much and is now, right before your eyes, being quietly taken apart by the very people who were supposed to protect it.
I am Janiel McEwan. I am not a politician. I hold no office, carry no party card, and have no personal score to settle with anyone named in this letter. I am a young Jamaican who watches, who reads, who listens, and who has decided that silence at this particular moment in our history would be its own kind of betrayal. Because the things that are happening in this country's political life right now are not small. They are not routine. They are the kinds of things that, if left unaddressed, become permanent. They become who we are. And I refuse to accept that this is who we are.
So I am writing this letter. I am asking you to read it. Not to respond to it, not to spin it, not to use it as ammunition against the other side. Simply to sit with it. To let it reach whatever part of you existed before the party, before the platform, before the ambition. The part that remembers why you said you wanted to serve Jamaica in the first place.
That part of you is who I am writing to.
We Did Not Bleed For This
August 6, 1962. I need you to go back there with me for a moment. Not as a political exercise. Not as a talking point. Go back there as a human being and feel the weight of what that day meant. Men and women who had known nothing but the boot of colonial authority, who had organised without resources, argued without platforms, sacrificed without guarantee of victory, they gave us something that most of the world has never been given. They gave us the right to govern ourselves. To sit in our own Parliament, to speak in our own name, to shape our own future with our own hands.
Norman Washington Manley did not argue the case for self-governance with the precision of his legal mind so that Gordon House could become a room where grown men make jokes about a woman's body. Alexander Bustamante did not stare down power with nothing but his voice and his nerve, organising the workers of this island into something that could not be ignored, so that the chamber he helped build could, sixty-four years later, descend into shouting matches that a child watching at home would be embarrassed by. They gave us something sacred. The question I am putting to every single person who holds political office in Jamaica today is a simple one. What have you done with it?
Because what I am watching is not stewardship. It is not service. What I am watching, with grief I cannot fully put into words, is the slow and almost comfortable unravelling of the standard that was supposed to separate a free, self-governing people from the chaos that those who doubted us predicted. And the most frightening thing about that unravelling is how normal it has begun to feel.
@AndrewHolnessJM@MarkJGolding@jlpjamaica@JamaicaPNP@JamaicaGleaner@JamaicaObserver
Mission accomplished. And my heart is full.
Today, we visited Constable Hunter at his place of work and presented him with his gift. Seeing him again was everything. We hugged. We laughed. We chatted. It felt familiar, warm, and deeply human.
But this story began on one of the most frightening days my family has ever experienced.
My grandmother, who is over 100 years old, had a serious fall. She was bleeding badly. There was no time to waste. I placed her in the back of my car and headed toward the hospital, praying traffic would not slow us down.
As I travelled through Constant Spring, I noticed a policeman on a motorcycle carrying out traffic duties. I urgently signalled to him. The moment he looked into the back of my car and saw my grandmother, he immediately understood the seriousness of the situation.
I asked him for help.
Without hesitation.
Without questions.
Without pause.
He stepped in.
What followed felt like something out of a movie. He escorted me through traffic from Constant Spring all the way to Andrews Memorial Hospital. You truly had to be there to see it. He stopped vehicles, waved cars aside, directed traffic with authority, all while expertly balancing on his motorcycle and giving instructions as he rode.
At one point, I honestly felt like the Prime Minister being escorted through traffic — except I was just a regular Jamaican trying to get my grandmother to the hospital in time.
His control of the bike, his calmness, and his determination were remarkable. In a moment filled with panic and fear, his presence was grounding. Because of his actions, my grandmother reached the hospital in record time.
She has since had surgery. She is now resting at home, stable, recovering, and surrounded by family. For that, we are deeply grateful — to the medical team, yes — but especially to the policeman whose name I did not know at the time.
I shared the story publicly, hoping somehow I could find him.
Then something extraordinary happened.
A woman called me. She told me that she too is a squaddie. She said she had seen the post and, based on the description alone, she was certain it was her colleague. Then she said something that stopped me in my tracks: she felt impressed by the Holy Spirit that it was indeed her squaddie.
She shared the post in her internal group.
And then it happened.
The squaddie responded.
He said it was him.
He explained that the moment he saw my 100-year-old grandmother bleeding, he knew immediately that he had to help. There was no hesitation. He saw vulnerability. He saw an emergency. And he did exactly what the Jamaica Constabulary Force says it stands for: to serve and protect.
The call became a three-way. The moment I heard his voice, there was no doubt. Calm. Grounded. The same steady presence from that terrifying morning.
We laughed. I told him I almost got everything right in my description — except his weight. I said 190, but he is closer to 230. He laughed and joked about my driving, reminding me that I am indeed a very slow driver. Beneath the laughter, the gratitude sat heavy and sincere.
I told him plainly, “Can you imagine if you were not there that day?”
True to character, his response was simple and humble.
“I was just doing my job.”
Today, we closed the loop.
We showed up. We said thank you. We honoured him — not just for riding a motorcycle through traffic, but for recognising an emergency, for acting without hesitation, and for reminding us that humanity still exists in uniform.
Thank you to the fellow squaddie who listened.
Thank you to the High Command for allowing this story to be shared and for permitting the posting of this photograph.
Thank you to Jamaica for liking and sharing the post.
Let us continue this trend. When the police do well, let us show up for them — because we are often quick to criticise when they do wrong.
Constable Hunter served. He protected. And my family will never forget it.
What a beautiful way to start 2026.
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