Government’s regrettable treatment of political ombudsman office
OBSTINACY in the face of incontestable truths is not a winning political strategy. Yet Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his Administration seem bent on doing just this in its stubbornness to subsume the Office of the Political Ombudsman (OPO) under the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ).
In what is a clear case of the tyranny of the majority, last Tuesday in Parliament the Government rammed through the Bill incorporating both entities. It was successful since it has the vast majority of the parliamentarians on its side.
It is not the first time that the Government has used its majority in this way. The last occasion, as I can recall, was the extension of the tenure of the director of public prosecutions (DPP). This has left it open to the charge of dictatorship, though I will not make that charge, at least not at this time.
But there has to be something worrying when a Government can use its majority in the people’s Parliament to ram through Bills about which civil society is trenchantly concerned. Here, the matter is not about what the politicians, especially what members of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), think.
Justice Minister Delroy Chuck and the prime minister, who are the public voices of the Government on this matter, have placed great weight on how the Opposition has acted in this matter. The prime minister is on record chastising civil society for not condemning the PNP’S position and what appears to be its last-minute rebuttal of an agreement to which they were a party earlier on.
The Government needs to understand that civil society and the growing number of independent voters in Jamaica are not obsessed with what the politicians on either side of the political divide may believe on this matter. While they play political games with such an important issue, independent voters are not prepared to indulge their political gymnastics. While either side bellyaches about each other’s treachery to win political favour in an election, the vast majority of us could not care less about their political gladiatorial contests. What we are concerned about is what is best for Jamaica. And a great number of us are saying that the Government should not rush the twinning of the OPO with the ECJ, that there are other alternatives to be considered and the country should be given more time to think about the matter.
The Government blames the PNP for being disingenuous in its last-minute opposition to a matter they had earlier agreed. But is not the Government just as disingenuous in bringing it at this last minute, right on the cusp of a major election? The political ombudsman’s post has been vacant since November 2022. Why did the Government not bring this six months ago when the issue could have been more fully ventilated. Why wait until local government elections were announced, an announcement over which it had total control, and then rush it through Parliament without public discussion? You see, Prime Minister Holness, Tom is drunk, but he is not a fool.
In insisting on the Opposition’s response being a dominant factor in its thinking, the Government has largely ignored the principal concern of civil society: that subsuming the OPO under the ECJ is a wrong move that will taint the reputation of the body.
Minister Chuck has repeatedly brushed aside this concern as he believes the unimpeachable reputation of the ECJ commissioners (my words) would not allow them to stoop that low in partisan politics. But in rushing through the Bill, which has now been ratified and adopted in the Senate, again through party dominance, the Government has left no room for public debate. To those of us looking on with concern it is as if the Government is telling us that its representatives in Parliament know best and the rest of us be damned.
In doing so they have shown themselves to be contemptuous of public opinion, as seemed obvious in the above-mentioned DPP matter and the way in which they have handled, to date, the constitutional review of Jamaica’s standing with the British monarchy. No doubt there is emerging a worrying narrative of the Administration being dictatorial.
Political authoritarianism is an emerging trend around the world. Although I do not believe that this is something we need to worry about in Jamaica, at least not yet, I am not naïve to the allure of power and the ways in which it can disfigure the minds of those who wield it.
The Bill has been rammed through Parliament, but one can only hope and insist that it be revisited when the local government dust has settled. We cannot afford to squander the gains we have made as a country in making the ECJ what it is today. Even a smidgen of taint should be avoided. As the Bible aptly advises: one should not just shun evil but its very appearance.
Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; The Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.