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Are these senators really serious?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
ACCORDING to Ms Kamina Johnson Smith, one of the 13 government senators still on record as endorsing Prime Minister Bruce Golding's role in 'Dudusgate', the proposed Protected Disclosures (Whistle-blower) Act is okay as is.
We find this very surprising.
For if it remains as is, the mandatory requirement within the proposed legislation for employees to report wrongdoing to their bosses first would certainly go a long way towards defeating its expressed objective to serve the public interest by encouraging and facilitating disclosures of improper conduct.
Mr Albert Edwards, the chief parliamentary counsel, tells us that the mandatory requirement — described as a "death warrant", by Ms Johnson Smith's counterparts in the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) — is the result of a "policy decision".
It would be very interesting to know exactly who the authors of this policy decision are. Could it be that the implications of this particular mandatory requirement, which are so obviously ominous to us, totally escaped them?
Or is it that they arrived at the decision in the full awareness that if the act were to give more by way of job security to potential whistle-blowers, scandals like 'Dudusgate' would be less protected?
Let's face it.
If it were solely up to the proposed legislation in its current form, the chances of us hearing even a half of what came out concerning the relationship between the Government and Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, who is now in the custody of the United States facing charges of drug and gunrunning, would be close to, if not nil.
It is against this background, as well as the recent pronouncements by Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin about the alleged extradition warrant tip-off to Mr Coke, that we take the dimmest view of Ms Johnson Smith's position on the matter.
Yes, it's true, as Ms Johnson says, that there are many people who "like their 15 minutes of fame". And we can readily understand the disruptiveness that would ensue under legislation that would facilitate spontaneous mouthing off in any and every forum by those who have an axe to grind.
However, this cannot be the basis for knocking the teeth out of a law with self-defeating provisions of dubious etymology.
And if ever there was a reason to doubt that the policy decision that gave rise to the mandatory provisions of the act might not necessarily have been arrived at in good faith, it would have to be the insistence, to this day, on the part of Ms Johnson Smith and her colleagues that the prime minister did nothing wrong.
Everything that these senators say and do must be viewed against the background of this very telling failure on their part to concede, as did Mr Bruce Golding, that his role in 'Dudusgate' was unwholesome and downright wrong.
For a country that purports to be striving to move in the right direction, this is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs for its Upper House to be in.
Most unsatisfactory, indeed.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
ACCORDING to Ms Kamina Johnson Smith, one of the 13 government senators still on record as endorsing Prime Minister Bruce Golding's role in 'Dudusgate', the proposed Protected Disclosures (Whistle-blower) Act is okay as is.
We find this very surprising.
For if it remains as is, the mandatory requirement within the proposed legislation for employees to report wrongdoing to their bosses first would certainly go a long way towards defeating its expressed objective to serve the public interest by encouraging and facilitating disclosures of improper conduct.
Mr Albert Edwards, the chief parliamentary counsel, tells us that the mandatory requirement — described as a "death warrant", by Ms Johnson Smith's counterparts in the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) — is the result of a "policy decision".
It would be very interesting to know exactly who the authors of this policy decision are. Could it be that the implications of this particular mandatory requirement, which are so obviously ominous to us, totally escaped them?
Or is it that they arrived at the decision in the full awareness that if the act were to give more by way of job security to potential whistle-blowers, scandals like 'Dudusgate' would be less protected?
Let's face it.
If it were solely up to the proposed legislation in its current form, the chances of us hearing even a half of what came out concerning the relationship between the Government and Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, who is now in the custody of the United States facing charges of drug and gunrunning, would be close to, if not nil.
It is against this background, as well as the recent pronouncements by Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin about the alleged extradition warrant tip-off to Mr Coke, that we take the dimmest view of Ms Johnson Smith's position on the matter.
Yes, it's true, as Ms Johnson says, that there are many people who "like their 15 minutes of fame". And we can readily understand the disruptiveness that would ensue under legislation that would facilitate spontaneous mouthing off in any and every forum by those who have an axe to grind.
However, this cannot be the basis for knocking the teeth out of a law with self-defeating provisions of dubious etymology.
And if ever there was a reason to doubt that the policy decision that gave rise to the mandatory provisions of the act might not necessarily have been arrived at in good faith, it would have to be the insistence, to this day, on the part of Ms Johnson Smith and her colleagues that the prime minister did nothing wrong.
Everything that these senators say and do must be viewed against the background of this very telling failure on their part to concede, as did Mr Bruce Golding, that his role in 'Dudusgate' was unwholesome and downright wrong.
For a country that purports to be striving to move in the right direction, this is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs for its Upper House to be in.
Most unsatisfactory, indeed.
