Jamaican authorities are strange creatures, My Friend P remarked last night as we watched yet another subplot in the tale of the nightclub horror where eight people were shot, four fatally, over the weekend.

Strange, because this subplot comes from the good ole Town Clerk Errol, the-beautifully-dark-and-bearded-one, Green, who managed to be travelling without the mayor being in front of him for the first time in many a newscast. [Maybe he lost the mayor's vehicle in traffic, or maybe the mayor just ditched him intentionally].

Green was listing out all the obvious reasons why this nightclub really was not a nightclub at all, because apart from not having the necessary safety features needed for public place for entertainment, it also did not have a licence from the city authorities to do the business it was in. Hmm.

Now, if this nightclub were in some secluded area off the beaten track, then maybe, we could think, wow, town clerk and mayor missed that one. But, oh no, the nightclub that is not a nightclub is right on the front page on as main as a main road can get.

Blind

You have to be blind not to notice that it is there, and it does not need to be night either for you to see that this is a place for partying. Yet this venue just missed the authorities, it had its invisible paint up to last Sunday night.

It was actually a bit irritating to hear the town clerk making pronouncements that essentially suggest that just maybe had the authorities had their eyes open, who knows how many people might have survived the mayhem last Monday? He claimed that the place of entertainment ought not to have been open at all. And after the fact of the deaths and the mayhem in this illegal place of entertainment, the town clerk seemed to honestly believe that his pronouncements were very important.

One wonders in cases like these if there ought not to be a civil case that could be taken against the state and specific people in authority who have failed the city and contributed to pain and sorrow because of their inefficiency. Yes, town clerk, you should be made to answer to all the family members of those who have died, just why the home of their deaths was allowed to be open.

Suspect with a gun

Curious, too, is the news that the alleged shooter at the club was under investigation for a similar event, but he was still touting around a licensed firearm. Now, how does that work? Something is terribly wrong with that picture. The cops doing that investigation, the lawyers prosecuting that case - the policeman who issued his licence for the firearm, what do they have to say for themselves now?

A civil suit in Jamaica might be a far stretch maybe, but one day if ever this country takes the question of accountability seriously, maybe there will be answers for us all.

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Yes, town clerk, you should be made to answer to all the family members of those who have died, just why the home of their deaths was allowed to be open?