Accompong Town Maroon Anniversary Celebration
Remarks
by
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness, ON, PC, MP,
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at the
Accompong Town Maroon Anniversary Celebration
on
January 6, 2026
————————————————————————-
My presentation to you today will be brief because the weather and the circumstances.
Let me commend the council for holding the event even after the disaster; that you were able to do it is commendable, and I personally congratulate you.
I want to commend all the attendees of the event, particularly those who stood huddled in the rain to view the performances and hear the presentations. It warmed my heart, and it showed your commitment.
Now, there are several themes that have been echoed from this stage, one of them is sovereignty. Sovereignty is the right of a people
to own and decide on their land and their resources, to make their laws and to enforce them. All of you here are part of the Jamaican sovereignty. You are part of Jamaica, and you are entitled to the protection resources of the state of Jamaica, so I stand here as your Prime Minister. I am obligated to you. I report to you. You are the ones who elect and decide on my office and my job is to report to you as a servant and steward of your resources. I want you to know that in me, you always have someone who is looking out for you. In me, you always have someone who is in your service and working for you. I want to invite your chief to stand beside me for a moment.
My job is not to be an overlord of anybody or anything. My job is to make sure that your affairs are administered properly, and my job is to make sure that the different levels of government in Jamaica work. You have something called the central government. You have the local government, but you also have other forms like community leadership and the maroons have for centuries shown this kind of community leadership. It is cultural leadership. I want to go back to what I said before.
You are all part of the Jamaican sovereignty. You have different levels of government and the community leadership that is displayed in bringing these kinds of the community leadership is something that we value. It is important in building the nation. It is important that we recognize the value of the cultural assets that we have, and the maroons have shown this. You had a sense of diversity. You give us as a people depth. When people hear about Jamaica and they hear about the maroons, they see a side of us that is not just about enslavement, it is also about resistance. It is that we stood up to oppression and we were successful, that Jamaicans force the English to sign a treaty. Yes, very few other countries in the world can show that, and therefore, the Government of Jamaica supports the maroon communities. We see you as an invaluable asset.
It is also true that for many decades we have not invested as we should have in these communities. It is also true that these communities have been left on their own, and as I’ve been coming here and I’m looking at your infrastructure seeing the challenges that you face in water, in roads, in housing, just looking at your field right here, I was commenting to Chief Currie that this field needs attention and I make the commitment today that as we rebuild from Hurricane Melissa which has damaged a significant number of your homes, and as we have started to repair your homes, the intervention of the government will not be only to repair your roofs, we’re going to look at your water situation. I gather there are many water sources around, that there was a water supply system but somehow that fell out of use. We’re going to restore that. The next time that I’m here participating in this commemoration ceremony, you should have a good feel, and I make the commitment that we’re going to upgrade this field.
We are expecting that in another few weeks we will complete the roofs that we have committed to repair. At that point, we’re going to do an evaluation, and if there are more roofs that we can do, we will do more repairs. Speaking to your chief, again, I realize that there are some houses that have been totally destroyed. We’re going to take a look at those and see how many of them we can repair but we know that it is not just this community of Accompong that has been badly hit. There are some other communities on the outskirts that are also impacted, and I’m going to myself next week, come and tour some of those communities and see what else we can do to support the restoration of those communities as well.
So, I go back to where I started. We have a collective sovereignty; one people. There is no need to divide ourselves. In a time of disaster, unity is important and what I have discovered is that a lot of people want to be heroes and they can only be heroes if they create villains. Sometimes what we should do is all work together and we all can be heroes in our own ways. If you can fix your little quarter and you fix your little quarter and whoever is at the top elected to leadership do their roles so that you can fix your quarter and you can fix your quarter and together, we work and we all fix the whole thing. That’s what we need to do as Jamaicans right now in order to truly recover from the disaster. We don’t need to make somebody the hero and somebody the villain, we need to work together as one people.
I close by saying this to you. We are now at the cusp, meaning we are right at the point where we can say our country is returning to peace, right there. In the 60s, some of you who were around then you would know that Jamaica’s murder rate was very low. It got out of hand in the 70s, 80s and it really exploded in the 90s into the 2000s. Last year we ended the year with our lowest number of homicides in 31 years, 673 murders. It might sound like it’s a great achievement and indeed it is a great achievement, but it is still 673 too many have died.
We as a people should never allow ourselves to be defined by violence but that is what has happened in the last four decades, that violence has become part of our social character and one
thing we must do is to change that. And I could say that the people of a Accompong, you have lived together without violence. You have been an example to the rest of Jamaica.
Now, equally, I also hear as was pointed out by one speaker, that many of our youngsters are being killed by the police. It is of concern. I don’t want to see any young man being killed. Right now, we are short of labour. We are short of people to work. I say to all our young people, our young men in particular, we are entering a different era. If you are in any way mixed up with crime, violence, take yourself out of that. That is the advice that I give, different era now. What I would want for you as a young man, I want you to get to be able to drive your fancy car or ride your bike or all of that but I want you to get it by legal means, not by crime and violence so I’m encouraging all our young men in particular to turn away from gangs, turn away from violence.
There will be and there is enough opportunities in Jamaica for work for you to be able to fulfil yourself without being involved in violence. Peace is the ultimate objective. We are going to reach a time where our murder rate is below 500, below 300. When we get to those low murder rates and everybody start to remember good Jamaica, where you can walk up and down and leave your windows and doors open, our country will grow and flourish and places like Accompong will be the place where you will have so many people coming and you don’t know what to do with them. We are on our way to that new Jamaica, which you all desire. Again, we get there as one people unified working together, no difference.
Blessings. Happy New Year. God’s richest blessing to you and your family.