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You stood up well, Peter Phillips
Sunday, February 27, 2011
AT about 11:38 am last Monday, the usually cool and super cultivated QC, Hugh Small, after failing, like Frank Phipps before him, to pigeonhole former Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips into accepting that collective responsibility in government required him to consult with Cabinet or at the very least, inform it of the two MOUs he signed in 2004 — brought to centrestage and made controversial by the JLP lawyers at the enquiry — came close to yielding to a burst of emotion that was quite uncharacteristic of him.
The fact is, once the Manatt enquiry began, the JLP and the governmental administration it forms would always be the side losing the toss. The first handicap the JLP administration had operating against it, on one hand, was the 'genetic' link between itself and Christopher 'Dudus' Coke (also known as 'Presi') and, on the other hand, the fact that Dudus was the boss of all bosses, the capo di tutti capi in Jamaica and effectively domiciled in the prime minister's constituency.
Most if not all in the JLP knew who the 'President' was and the extent of his powerful reach.
The second handicap was the fact that it was public pressure which led to the ending of the delayed extradition. It was also public pressure which led to the setting up of the enquiry. At every step thereafter, the JLP and the JLP administration were always going to be behind the eight ball. As one body, it needed something at the enquiry to bring legitimacy to what many saw as its gross misdeeds.
Enter the MOUs which gave Jamaica's partners in the cross-border fight against the illicit trade in narcotics and gun running the right to receive data on telephone conversations between those so involved. No one intended to listen to a married man arranging a surreptitious assignation with his wife's younger sister. No one was interested in listening to a man pleading with his bank manager. Those were never the objectives.
'Sell out! CIA!' the JLP shouted. According to the political voices, Peter Phillips had sold out the rights of Jamaicans to their privacy. Although it was utter nonsense, it had a populist ring to it, and being politicians the JLP milked it, and its young calf, G2K, descending slowly to the realm of the bottom feeders, allowed itself to be sucked into the muck left behind for it.
It is quite possible that as a result of those very MOUs the DEA has listened to telephone conversations between high officials and those involved in the illicit trade in drugs and guns. Are some of them running scared? Is America likely to make new extradition requests for very big fish because those MOUs were instituted?
The PNP on show
If we are honest to ourselves we will admit that like any political party anywhere in the world, with little going for it in public discourse, the PNP needed the enquiry to attach good cause to its lead in the polls. It knew that the poll numbers would have been affected by the JLP government's appalling handling of the extradition of Coke and it certainly intended to wring out every last drop of doubt the public had that the JLP had messed up.
So the PNP has been using the enquiry as its springboard to a firmer grip on the minds of our people and to its launch of what it believes will be certain victory in 2012. Through the enquiry it has every intention of inflicting enough damage on the JLP to the extent that the commissioners will have no other choice but to issue a damning report on the JLP/JLP government's handling of the matters being probed.
And the PNP intends to wave around that report and hit the media circuit all the way to the next polls.
Peter Phillips has held up well under the skilfully invasive cross-examinations by Frank Phipps and Hugh Small, lawyers appearing for the JLP and the prime minister respectively. Once the MOUs were introduced into the equation, those lawyers, like any smart lawyer sensing an opening, ripped into Phillips for about a week, but, in my estimation, the former security minister in the last PNP administration was fully up to the task. He was definitely no pushover.
Inside the PNP Dr Phillips' 'performance' at the enquiry is bound to bring about a swing in the pendulum of those aspiring for the leadership post. To my way of seeing it, Portia Simpson Miller represents the past and a not so bright one at that. Although the PNP seems not to be questioning the legitimacy of Simpson Miller's leadership, the general public has seen Phillips and that must bring about a renewal of questions, even those which only reside in the mind.
In other words, the bright burning star in the PNP is now Peter Phillips.
Many strikes against the JLP
Dr Ronald Robinson and Prime Minister Golding cannot both be right, or for that matter both wrong. If one is right, the other is wrong.
The prime minister's statement to the enquiry said that it was while the former state minister in the foreign affairs ministry was abroad on a private trip that he was asked to get involved in the Manatt fiasco. Dr Robinson testified at the enquiry that he was not on any private trip and was actually sent on the mission by the prime minister. That is damaging stuff!
Who must we believe? According to Solicitor General Douglas Leys and Robinson, at no stage did any of them form the impression that the JLP as a party was the entity involved in discussions with Manatt.
Having resigned on principle, as he said, (I believe him) could Robinson not have then enhanced the JLP's and the government's position by telling the enquiry that the lines were so blurred that he was unsure of whether he was representing the JLP or the government? Of course, he did not do that and in doing what he did, the JLP and all it represents have an impossible climb out of the hole it has fallen into.
After having watched the painful cross-examinations of Security Minister Dwight Nelson who found a fond proximity to the words, 'I can't recall' during blistering questions from KD Knight and Patrick Atkinson and the sotto voce comments from the PNP gallery at the commission ridiculing him and his answers, I believe that the contrast between him and the former PNP security minister Peter Phillips is now an open book. It is stark!
If Minister Nelson said he did not know Dudus, I have no problem with that. But the minister not knowing of Dudus' reach and his stand atop the pedestal in Tivoli Gardens are a bit of a stretch.
In reality Dudus was never the type to seek the limelight. I met him in Tivoli Gardens 1999 or 2000 and was told that he was 'The President'. As to the exact year, I can't recall. Those words could grow on me.
In the short 10 or so seconds that it took to introduce us to each other, I formed the impression that he was shy and not the sort to eagerly engage in conversation. I have met quite a few of the so-called dons -- JLP and PNP -- and at least two on the PNP side (one purely and openly a thug) were the partying types. One even had lunch daily at a well-known hotel poolside in the New Kingston area where he was always well-received.
As far as I know Dudus was never that sort. That said, I can understand some JLP Cabinet members not actually meeting him, but not knowing of him and the umbilical link? That I find strange.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1F96W7LUj
Sunday, February 27, 2011
AT about 11:38 am last Monday, the usually cool and super cultivated QC, Hugh Small, after failing, like Frank Phipps before him, to pigeonhole former Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips into accepting that collective responsibility in government required him to consult with Cabinet or at the very least, inform it of the two MOUs he signed in 2004 — brought to centrestage and made controversial by the JLP lawyers at the enquiry — came close to yielding to a burst of emotion that was quite uncharacteristic of him.
The fact is, once the Manatt enquiry began, the JLP and the governmental administration it forms would always be the side losing the toss. The first handicap the JLP administration had operating against it, on one hand, was the 'genetic' link between itself and Christopher 'Dudus' Coke (also known as 'Presi') and, on the other hand, the fact that Dudus was the boss of all bosses, the capo di tutti capi in Jamaica and effectively domiciled in the prime minister's constituency.
Most if not all in the JLP knew who the 'President' was and the extent of his powerful reach.
The second handicap was the fact that it was public pressure which led to the ending of the delayed extradition. It was also public pressure which led to the setting up of the enquiry. At every step thereafter, the JLP and the JLP administration were always going to be behind the eight ball. As one body, it needed something at the enquiry to bring legitimacy to what many saw as its gross misdeeds.
Enter the MOUs which gave Jamaica's partners in the cross-border fight against the illicit trade in narcotics and gun running the right to receive data on telephone conversations between those so involved. No one intended to listen to a married man arranging a surreptitious assignation with his wife's younger sister. No one was interested in listening to a man pleading with his bank manager. Those were never the objectives.
'Sell out! CIA!' the JLP shouted. According to the political voices, Peter Phillips had sold out the rights of Jamaicans to their privacy. Although it was utter nonsense, it had a populist ring to it, and being politicians the JLP milked it, and its young calf, G2K, descending slowly to the realm of the bottom feeders, allowed itself to be sucked into the muck left behind for it.
It is quite possible that as a result of those very MOUs the DEA has listened to telephone conversations between high officials and those involved in the illicit trade in drugs and guns. Are some of them running scared? Is America likely to make new extradition requests for very big fish because those MOUs were instituted?
The PNP on show
If we are honest to ourselves we will admit that like any political party anywhere in the world, with little going for it in public discourse, the PNP needed the enquiry to attach good cause to its lead in the polls. It knew that the poll numbers would have been affected by the JLP government's appalling handling of the extradition of Coke and it certainly intended to wring out every last drop of doubt the public had that the JLP had messed up.
So the PNP has been using the enquiry as its springboard to a firmer grip on the minds of our people and to its launch of what it believes will be certain victory in 2012. Through the enquiry it has every intention of inflicting enough damage on the JLP to the extent that the commissioners will have no other choice but to issue a damning report on the JLP/JLP government's handling of the matters being probed.
And the PNP intends to wave around that report and hit the media circuit all the way to the next polls.
Peter Phillips has held up well under the skilfully invasive cross-examinations by Frank Phipps and Hugh Small, lawyers appearing for the JLP and the prime minister respectively. Once the MOUs were introduced into the equation, those lawyers, like any smart lawyer sensing an opening, ripped into Phillips for about a week, but, in my estimation, the former security minister in the last PNP administration was fully up to the task. He was definitely no pushover.
Inside the PNP Dr Phillips' 'performance' at the enquiry is bound to bring about a swing in the pendulum of those aspiring for the leadership post. To my way of seeing it, Portia Simpson Miller represents the past and a not so bright one at that. Although the PNP seems not to be questioning the legitimacy of Simpson Miller's leadership, the general public has seen Phillips and that must bring about a renewal of questions, even those which only reside in the mind.
In other words, the bright burning star in the PNP is now Peter Phillips.
Many strikes against the JLP
Dr Ronald Robinson and Prime Minister Golding cannot both be right, or for that matter both wrong. If one is right, the other is wrong.
The prime minister's statement to the enquiry said that it was while the former state minister in the foreign affairs ministry was abroad on a private trip that he was asked to get involved in the Manatt fiasco. Dr Robinson testified at the enquiry that he was not on any private trip and was actually sent on the mission by the prime minister. That is damaging stuff!
Who must we believe? According to Solicitor General Douglas Leys and Robinson, at no stage did any of them form the impression that the JLP as a party was the entity involved in discussions with Manatt.
Having resigned on principle, as he said, (I believe him) could Robinson not have then enhanced the JLP's and the government's position by telling the enquiry that the lines were so blurred that he was unsure of whether he was representing the JLP or the government? Of course, he did not do that and in doing what he did, the JLP and all it represents have an impossible climb out of the hole it has fallen into.
After having watched the painful cross-examinations of Security Minister Dwight Nelson who found a fond proximity to the words, 'I can't recall' during blistering questions from KD Knight and Patrick Atkinson and the sotto voce comments from the PNP gallery at the commission ridiculing him and his answers, I believe that the contrast between him and the former PNP security minister Peter Phillips is now an open book. It is stark!
If Minister Nelson said he did not know Dudus, I have no problem with that. But the minister not knowing of Dudus' reach and his stand atop the pedestal in Tivoli Gardens are a bit of a stretch.
In reality Dudus was never the type to seek the limelight. I met him in Tivoli Gardens 1999 or 2000 and was told that he was 'The President'. As to the exact year, I can't recall. Those words could grow on me.
In the short 10 or so seconds that it took to introduce us to each other, I formed the impression that he was shy and not the sort to eagerly engage in conversation. I have met quite a few of the so-called dons -- JLP and PNP -- and at least two on the PNP side (one purely and openly a thug) were the partying types. One even had lunch daily at a well-known hotel poolside in the New Kingston area where he was always well-received.
As far as I know Dudus was never that sort. That said, I can understand some JLP Cabinet members not actually meeting him, but not knowing of him and the umbilical link? That I find strange.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1F96W7LUj
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