It is entirely possible, and perhaps true, that Mayor Desmond McKenzie of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC) did not know of the absence of functioning lights in sections of St. William Grant Park in downtown Kingston. We did not address that specific when we mentioned the state of the park in these columns earlier this year.

What Mr. McKenzie could certainly not plead ignorance of, at least not with any semblance of credibility, is the piece of nastiness that St. William Grant Park has become. This newspaper, in its news pages, and subsequently in editorials leading up to the Cricket World Cup, highlighted the squalor that had overtaken the park.

It is so, and notoriously known to be so, that this park has become a haven for social derelicts, and worse, a sort of public lavatory for thousands of transients who traverse downtown Kingston every day. Indeed, it is difficult to pass anywhere near St. William Grant Park and, even within the plush confines of air-conditioned SUVs and other top-end vehicles, not experience the overwhelming rankness of urine and the stench of excreta. The outside perimeter walls of the park have been stained to a thick, grimy grey from their daily drenching with human waste.

So, while we moan and lament the recent reported rapes in the park, the circumstance that helped to create the environment that facilitated these crimes is symptomatic of a profoundly worrying problem. There is a loss or misplacement, it seems to us, of our sense of self. Jamaica, it seems, is increasingly unable to celebrate heroes - unless they are those created in surface hype and festooned with tinsel.

Let us again remind ourselves of what is represented in and by St. William Grant Park. The place is named for an important figure in Jamaica's labour movement, an associate of Sir Alexander Bustamante who played a critical role in the island's modern trade union history. And even more, at the northern and southern entrances of the park are, respectively, statues of the National Heroes, Norman Manley and Sir Alexander. Inside the park, too, is a statue of Queen Victoria, in whose honour it was previously named.

Respect for Jamaica's history and reverence for those we declare our heroes should evoke from us a care for and deference to the shrines we fashion in their honour.

We expect to be reminded, in the case of St. William Grant Park, and downtown Kingston generally, of the failures of the former national administration, to enhance the environment. Redevelopment did not happen as promised. Narrow political partisanship may well have been the cause.

We nonetheless insist that none of this excuses the squalor into which the KSAC, the city's local government, has allowed St. William Grant Park to descend. It does not demand huge amounts of money to keep the park in decent maintenance - to paint the walls, trim its trees, mow the grass, clean the toilets and replace the lights. Nor can it overwhelm the city to maintain reasonable security at the park.

Moreover, given the relationship between Mr. McKenzie's party and some of the historic personages associated with the park, we would have expected him to be concerned with its maintenance. But perhaps Mayor McKenzie does not mind presiding soon over Christmas tree- lighting ceremonies in the midst of urban squalor.