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Aren't you sadly proud now, JLP?
MARK WIGNALL
Thursday, June 16, 2011
As for me, I sought nothing more than what the man and woman at street level knew was just and palpably obvious.
I needed no long file of huddled humanity, broken and accepting of their fate, or kings and princes lined against a wall and shot down as the crowd raised a loud cry in support of the bloodlust. I simply wanted justice.
Manatt Commissioners (L to R) Anthony Irons, Émil George and Donald Scharschmidt
Justice to me was that talk with Miss Ida and Mass Jus and the yuppie seated at the Pegasus poolside with his Benz never far from his remote, and all sharing a view that although there must be social differences between them, this time around, there was a sign of change.
I needed nothing more than our guts and ability to sift sand from salt pork for us to believe that this JLP administration that came into power in 2007 was, after all, the real deal.
A read into the excessively short (58 pages) Manatt/Extradition Report tells me that until the mechanics of what the common man uses to demand change are changed, we will be always in that state where the status quo becomes empowered to maintain its destructive hold on the vast majority of us.
Having been the first Commission of Enquiry to have been so publicised, televised and transmitted to so many across the social divide, what came out in it was done in real time and hardly subject to the convenient analyses of those of us who, in our formative years, packed in more school hours than others.
Miss Ida with her perennial smile and Mass Jus with ill-fitting dentures saw and heard it just as those using their BBs to communicate beheld the 20 witnesses and the legal minds sometimes clashing in that $78-million grand waste of time.
One of the most glaring findings is this one. Against the background of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips insisting at all times that the firm was in a contract with the Government of Jamaica, the commission has found that it was the JLP which had employed the services of the American law firm to lobby on its behalf. Where is the evidence of this that the commission has brought to the public, apart from simply implying that because the report has said so, that fact gives it credence? Where is it, considering that Émil George, chairman, was, in the moments when he was forced to comment on matters having to do with direct contact with MPP, seemingly not too taken up with pursuing that route?
Remember now, that was what the prime minister was taken to task for when he was questioned by Dr Peter Phillips of the PNP and denied most stridently that any such engagement had been made. That was what he later apologised for, or something of the sort.
Christopher "Dudus" Coke was a man of means and the JLP and the government were always in awe of him, of the powers of the JLP-controlled Tivoli and its arsenal, and the powers that the whole meant to the JLP. He was truly the "President". When the Americans requested his extradition, it was always obvious that he was never a man who was once arrested on the streets of New York for shoplifting. The allegations of drug and gun running across international borders made him big time.
Last year, the government, including especially the prime minister, led the entire nation in a song-and-dance routine about his rights, when every one of us knew that if Dudus had been just another Jamaican, no voices would have been raised on his behalf.
So in all of that, the report has confirmed, in its pages, that his constitutional rights were denied. Was it not also close to acceptance during the enquiry that there was evidence given on one of the supporting affidavits that the attorney general, Dorothy Lightbourne, had had other evidence to sign the extradition request apart from the controversial interception of telephonic communication? Did we not see that line of questioning shot down during the enquiry? And now, in the report, the worst that is said about the role of the attorney general is that she could have acted sooner and probably had memory lapses!
Memory lapses tend to put the small man in prison more times than we are prepared to admit, especially as the legalities swirl over his head in a courtroom.
Amazingly, of the four main recommendations that the report has made, are two that speak to giving future commissions more power. Not only were those leads to the future not a specific part of the initial terms of reference, but it seems to me that those have been made for the simple reason that the chairmanship of the Commission was utterly weak. Yeah, it's payback time! In words!
Then two of the most credible witnesses - Peter Phillips, PNP security minister in 2004 when the MOUs were signed, and former police commissioner, Hardley Lewin, are mentioned as overstepping their bounds. Utterly amazing!
Frankly, even for its brevity, the report is not worth the paper ($1.3 million per page) it's written on. I totally agree with the PNP that it is a whitewash and a travesty of what we all saw, heard, and to a lesser extent, knew, but I would not be prepared to march with the party. In its day it was no damn better.
I am reminded of the lazy but witty schoolboy given the essay to write, "The Cricket Match". Next day he presents it and it is one line, one page. Rain, No Play.
In this instance, there was indeed a game - a most sinister one - but it does seem as if the score was long determined before the last ball was bowled.
I am forever left with the memory of Émil George and Donald Scharschmidt, two of the lawyers at the chair of the enquiry huddled as Anthony Irons, public servant par excellence, is left out of the deliberations. Irons seemed then to be an innocent bystander.
To what extent was that taken through to the completion of the report?
As past enquiries have gone down in this country, the ruling administration has got what it has desired - a clean bill of health. We were the fools for believing that what we all saw and heard made us enraged and fearful of the power of government and that from one corner justice could be had.
Now we have more reason to be even more fearful.
observemark@gmail.com
A read into the excessively short (58 pages) Manatt/Extradition Report tells me that until the mechanics of what the common man uses to demand change are changed, we will be always in that state where the status quo becomes empowered to maintain its destructive hold on the vast majority of us.
Having been the first Commission of Enquiry to have been so publicised, televised and transmitted to so many across the social divide, what came out in it was done in real time and hardly subject to the convenient analyses of those of us who, in our formative years, packed in more school hours than others.
Miss Ida with her perennial smile and Mass Jus with ill-fitting dentures saw and heard it just as those using their BBs to communicate beheld the 20 witnesses and the legal minds sometimes clashing in that $78-million grand waste of time.
One of the most glaring findings is this one. Against the background of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips insisting at all times that the firm was in a contract with the Government of Jamaica, the commission has found that it was the JLP which had employed the services of the American law firm to lobby on its behalf. Where is the evidence of this that the commission has brought to the public, apart from simply implying that because the report has said so, that fact gives it credence? Where is it, considering that Émil George, chairman, was, in the moments when he was forced to comment on matters having to do with direct contact with MPP, seemingly not too taken up with pursuing that route?
Remember now, that was what the prime minister was taken to task for when he was questioned by Dr Peter Phillips of the PNP and denied most stridently that any such engagement had been made. That was what he later apologised for, or something of the sort.
Christopher "Dudus" Coke was a man of means and the JLP and the government were always in awe of him, of the powers of the JLP-controlled Tivoli and its arsenal, and the powers that the whole meant to the JLP. He was truly the "President". When the Americans requested his extradition, it was always obvious that he was never a man who was once arrested on the streets of New York for shoplifting. The allegations of drug and gun running across international borders made him big time.
Last year, the government, including especially the prime minister, led the entire nation in a song-and-dance routine about his rights, when every one of us knew that if Dudus had been just another Jamaican, no voices would have been raised on his behalf.
So in all of that, the report has confirmed, in its pages, that his constitutional rights were denied. Was it not also close to acceptance during the enquiry that there was evidence given on one of the supporting affidavits that the attorney general, Dorothy Lightbourne, had had other evidence to sign the extradition request apart from the controversial interception of telephonic communication? Did we not see that line of questioning shot down during the enquiry? And now, in the report, the worst that is said about the role of the attorney general is that she could have acted sooner and probably had memory lapses!
Memory lapses tend to put the small man in prison more times than we are prepared to admit, especially as the legalities swirl over his head in a courtroom.
Amazingly, of the four main recommendations that the report has made, are two that speak to giving future commissions more power. Not only were those leads to the future not a specific part of the initial terms of reference, but it seems to me that those have been made for the simple reason that the chairmanship of the Commission was utterly weak. Yeah, it's payback time! In words!
Then two of the most credible witnesses - Peter Phillips, PNP security minister in 2004 when the MOUs were signed, and former police commissioner, Hardley Lewin, are mentioned as overstepping their bounds. Utterly amazing!
Frankly, even for its brevity, the report is not worth the paper ($1.3 million per page) it's written on. I totally agree with the PNP that it is a whitewash and a travesty of what we all saw, heard, and to a lesser extent, knew, but I would not be prepared to march with the party. In its day it was no damn better.
I am reminded of the lazy but witty schoolboy given the essay to write, "The Cricket Match". Next day he presents it and it is one line, one page. Rain, No Play.
In this instance, there was indeed a game - a most sinister one - but it does seem as if the score was long determined before the last ball was bowled.
I am forever left with the memory of Émil George and Donald Scharschmidt, two of the lawyers at the chair of the enquiry huddled as Anthony Irons, public servant par excellence, is left out of the deliberations. Irons seemed then to be an innocent bystander.
To what extent was that taken through to the completion of the report?
As past enquiries have gone down in this country, the ruling administration has got what it has desired - a clean bill of health. We were the fools for believing that what we all saw and heard made us enraged and fearful of the power of government and that from one corner justice could be had.
Now we have more reason to be even more fearful.
observemark@gmail.com
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