Saving the ombudsman

IT IS reasonable to assume that Delroy Chuck couldn’t have suspended Parliament’s debate on the administration’s controversial plan to subsume the political ombudsman into the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) without a signal from Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

And it is unlikely that the PM would have done that, rather than using his government’s big majority to ram the bill through Parliament, weren’t it for the intervention of the tough and feisty Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) stalwart, Karl Samuda, who, though now a backbencher, still wields substantial influence in his party. Mr Samuda warned his colleagues against “tinkering” with the ECJ.

But whatever was the catalyst for Mr Chuck’s action, good sense prevailed. The Government should keep it that way. Which, in the circumstance, would mean – notwithstanding any bad advice to the contrary – abandoning the enterprise of saddling the ECJ with the ombudsman’s job.

The Government should also go further. At Tuesday’s sitting of the House, Prime Minister Holness should cause to be announced the appointment of an interim, or acting, political ombudsman, to fill an office that has been vacant for 14 months, since the seven-year term of the former ombudsman, Donna Parchment-Brown, expired in November, 2022. Or, as this newspaper has suggested, the governor general, Sir Patrick Allen, should be called upon by interested parties to test his powers in the matter by appointing an ombudsman, after consultation with the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition, in accordance with the letter of the law.

The acting ombudsman would have the same powers as were enjoyed by Ms Parchment-Brown under the existing act, until after the February 26 municipal elections. Afterwards, with parliamentarians free to focus on their legislative functions, the administration would then bring interim amendments to the Political Ombudsman Act, incorporating any powers it intended the office to have as an adjunct of the ECJ.

Agreed amendments would remain in place until after the next general election, constitutionally due in 18 months – September 2025 – after which the new Parliament would consider a major reshaping of the Office of the Political Ombudsman.

IMPORTANT INSTITUTION

The political ombudsman is one of the important institutions bequeathed by Jamaica’s turbulent politics of the 1970s and 1980s when election campaigns were often violent. The ombudsman role was to be an arbiter of good political behaviour, so as to lessen the possibility of provocations turning to violence. The office’s guide is a code of conduct agreed to by political parties.

The law gives the ombudsman semi-judicial authority in conducting investigations, whether they are on his own initiative or on the basis of complaints. It, however, provides no power to sanction. The ombudsman recommends actions.

This, however, doesn’t make the office wholly ineffective, as its critics have claimed. The ombudsman’s ability to call out offenders, and to do so loudly (the capacity to name and shame) gives the office important leverage, as well as moral authority.

However, once Ms Parchment-Brown’s time ended, the government made clear its disinclination to have the post filled. It floated the idea of turning the ombudsman’s function over to the ECJ, the body that deals with the technical and related issues of managing elections.

But how the new arrangement would work was never clearly articulated. And the law to give effect to the scheme was tabled in Parliament only last Tuesday, two days before the announcement of the date of the municipal elections.

It was expected that the bill would be taken through all its stages in a single afternoon, without the public knowing what was proposed in the legislation. Opposition MPS claimed to have only had sight of the bill just before its tabling.

Whatever may have been contemplated by the Government, critics, including the island’s leading private sector group, mainstream churches and election monitors and human rights organisations, insist that it starts with a fundamental flaw: giving the ECJ the job of the political ombudsman.

In January, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) repeated earlier calls for the Government to “reinstate the Political Ombudsman, equipped with the authority to implement disciplinary measures against actions that contradict the political code of conduct”.

SIMILAR CALL

In making a similar call, the Jamaica Council of Churches, which groups non-evangelicals, warned that attaching the ombudsman to the ECJ “risk(ed) … reintroducing concerns and confrontations of a partisan nature and detract from the distinctly apolitical and neutral work of the ECJ”.

The election monitors, Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), argued that it wouldn’t be “prudent to submit to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica the ethical questions which are normally dealt with by the political ombudsman”.

Mr Samuda, the JLP stalwart, who was his party’s representative on the ECJ (it has a majority of independent members) for over a decade, struck a similar note on Tuesday.

Describing the ECJ to be among “the most farreaching … (and) of the most important institutions, in Jamaica and the western hemisphere, Mr Samuda said: “It is not an institution that can take tinkering … I do not buy the idea that we are in a hurry because we are having an election.”

He added: “Mechanisms can be found with creative minds and well-thinking people where we can solve that problem without tampering with what we have achieved.”

Mr Samuda is right. Which is why an acting ombudsman should be appointed as a matter of urgency.

After the general election, with a new Parliament in place, a fundamental restructuring of the political ombudsman would be appropriate as part of a broader constitutional reform project.

For instance, the post of political ombudsman should evolve to being the Commissioner for Parliamentary and Political Conduct (CPPC), whose job would include investigating, on the behalf of Parliament’s privileges committee, serious complaints of misconduct against legislators. These would include those complaints that, after requisite trials, might lead to removal or recall from Parliament.