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Jamaica’s Prime Minister Steps Down Under Cloud

Peter Richards

KINGSTON, Oct 20 2011 (IPS) - As he sits in a New York jail cell awaiting sentencing on a racketeering conviction, Christopher “Dudus” Coke has all the time in the world to reflect on the role he played in the downfall of at least two prominent Jamaican politicians, none more so than Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

Golding, Jamaica’s eighth prime minister, is stepping down on Sunday, a year before his five-year term in office expires, amid controversy surrounding the extradition of Coke to the United States on drug and weapons charges last year.

Golding acknowledged earlier this month that questions about the role he played in the extradition “have remained a source of concern in the minds of many people”.

“It was never about Coke’s guilt or innocence. It was about a breach of our constitution, and had it been a person other than Coke it perhaps would never have become the cause célèbre that it turned out to be,” Golding said in a national address on Oct. 2.

Four years ago, he led the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to victory over the incumbent People’s National Party (PNP) headed by the island’s first and to date only woman prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller.

The JLP has since turned to Education Minister Andrew Holness, a protégé of former prime minister Edward Seaga, to guide it into the future as the next PM. Holness is 39, and his relative youth – Golding is 63 – has been touted by the JLP as an asset that will bring new energy into Jamaican politics.

But as the fallout from the Coke saga continues, the U.S.-based Time magazine noted last week that Jamaican officialdom’s links to organised crime date back to the cold war politics of the 1970s, when both the JLP and the PNP “often employed armed thugs. By the 1990s, those gangs had morphed into drug-trafficking organisations.”

More than 70 people were killed in the massive police operation to arrest Coke, which led to a state of emergency being declared in the capital, Kingston.

Sociologist and newspaper columnist Peter Espeut said that civil society in 21st-century Jamaica was determined to make life uncomfortable for politicians “who appear to ally themselves with unsavoury characters”.

“Things just could be getting better,” he said after Golding’s announcement to quit government.

Golding had been steadfast in his conviction that Washington’s extradition request was based on information obtained illegally. As he told Jamaicans on the eve of his departure, “We have since amended the Interception of Communications Act to permit in the future the action that was taken in Coke’s case but which, at that time, was in violation of our Constitution.”

“However, the entire episode has affected me deeply and the perceptions that are held by some people have not been dispelled, notwithstanding the exhaustive deliberations of a commission of enquiry,” he added.

Apart from Golding, the Coke saga also led to the removal of attorney general and justice minister Dorothy Lightbourne, in a cabinet re- shuffle that Golding announced in June.

During the commission hearing, Lightbourne said she had initially refused to sign the extradition request for Coke, arguing that his constitutional rights were violated by the use of warrantless wiretapping evidence obtained by U.S. law enforcement officials.

Her refusal to sign the document prompted a diplomatic impasse between Jamaica and the United States that lasted for nine months. She signed the document only after being ordered to do so by Golding.

Public pressure had been mounting on Golding to quit after it emerged that he had played a pivotal role in the hiring of the U.S.-based law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to lobby Washington on the extradition request.

But even as he survived that onslaught, it was obvious that within his own party, it was felt his presence at the head of government would hurt the JLP’s chances in the 2012 general election.

Veteran Jamaican writer Ken Chaplin wrote that the main reason for Golding’s resignation was that he had lost the confidence of key members of the party’s inner circle.

“There was a great deal of internal backbiting and criticism of Golding when he removed Dorothy Lightbourne as minister of justice and attorney general…certain elements in the party were angry with how Golding ‘dumped’ Lightbourne and left her out in the cold.

“Out of the contention emerged a small gang of conspirators who pledged to get rid of Golding,” he added.

The opposition PNP’s general secretary Peter Bunting said, “The truth is that the prime minister had to resign because of a complete loss of credibility, and in those circumstances you would have expected him to be more penitent and remorseful.”

“He seemed instead to be attempting to use the occasion of resignation to give a fresh start to the over four-year-old JLP administration” Bunting added, in a reference to the selection of Holness as Golding’s successor.

During his stewardship, Golding began to implement various stringent policies under a 27-month “stand-by agreement” with the International Monetary Fund under which Jamaica can draw down 1.3 billion dollars from the IMF if the country meets quarterly targets along the way.

The local economy grew by 2.1 percent in the second quarter of the year above the government’s projection of 1.5 percent, which Golding claimed is evidence that the process of economic recovery is continuing – although Jamaica’s unemployment rate of 11.8 percent remains the second-highest in the region.

It also has the fourth-highest poverty rate, with 43.1 percent of the population earning less than 2.50 dollars a day.

“There are several things that have been done and there are a lot of things that Bruce Golding would have wanted to come to fruition, and if he has any disappointment it would be that he wasn’t able to do those. But he is very strong on the fact that they will be implemented despite him not being there,” Information Minister Daryl Vaz told a post Cabinet news conference on Wednesday.