Editorial | JDF’s reputation at stake

Jamaicans trust their army. So much so that approximately six of every ten would support a military coup as a means of tackling the country's crime problem.

Not only is that sentiment strongest in Jamaica among the 22 countries surveyed on people's attitudes to democracy and governance in the Americas, it is 10 percentage points higher than in Guatemala, another country with high levels of criminal violence, 12 points more than Mexico, where drug cartels employ violence with impunity. And it is not only to fight hard-core and violent crime that Jamaicans would accede to a military government. More than half of them (55.3 per cent) said they would approve of military men leaving their barracks to have a go at corruption.

This newspaper, of course, is firmly against the idea of a military coup. For while democracy and the right of people to choose their government is often messy, the irrefutable evidence is that when militaries overthrow elected governments, the results are usually worse. They tend to behave with impunity. And the efficiency of their camps and barracks is hardly replicated in the country at large.

That is why we are heartened by the several past statements of commitment to democracy by Major General Rocky Meade, the chief of defence staff and head of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), to which we believe he and his officers firmly adhere.

The JDF's reputation and the respect Jamaicans have for the institution are deserved. It is a disciplined and seemingly well-run organisation, whose members, the public believes, are generally held to account for the infractions. Yet, the JDF is not very good at transparency. It expects the public to accept - and they generally do - that its actions are honourable and need not be subject to outside scrutiny. Which is the sense we get from the JDF's approach to the Keith Clarke affair.

This time, though, the JDF is patently wrong and runs the risk of eroding confidence in the institution.

RESPECTED MAN

Mr Clarke, a respected accountant and auditor, was killed by soldiers at his home in 2010 during a state of emergency to help facilitate the extradition arrest of west Kingston strongman Christopher Coke and to quell the unrest of his private militia and supporters in the area.

It was not clear why the soldiers ended up at Mr Clarke's home several miles from west Kingston or what triggered the barrage of high-powered gunfire at the premises. But three soldiers - Corporal Odel Buckley, Lance Corporal Greg Tinglin and Private Arnold Henry - were charged for murder, until it emerged recently, on the eve of their trial, that in 2016, six years after the state of emergency, then National Security Minister Peter Bunting had provided them with certificates of immunity.

Mr Bunting wasn't the minister at the time of the state of emergency. Nor did the administration in which he served form the Government. But 2016 was when the JDF, then headed by the current police chief, Major General Antony Anderson, chose to exercise its option for the certificates, under the regulations that govern emergency powers. Such certificates apparently exempt security members from civil or criminal proceedings for "acts done in good faith" unless their behaviour was proved to be otherwise.

The JDF's approach to the civilian investigation of Mr Clarke's killing was controversial from the start. It was accused, among other things, of being uncooperative - accusations of which Mr Bunting would have been well aware when he issued the "good faith" certificates. It is not known what legal advice he took on the decision.

That these certificates were kept secret for two years until the murder trial was about to begin is troubling. It strikes us as an ambush-style, Nicodemus strategy to the matter, for which there were no security implications. The JDF's leadership, however, must have satisfied itself of the efficacy of this approach, and would also have satisfied themselves, after an internal investigation - which should have been exhaustive - of the merit of the request for the certificates.

The public deserves to have the benefit of the information from those proceedings. The JDF's reputation is at stake.