Editorial | End your silence, George Wright

When Jamaica’s House of Representatives convenes its weekly session today and George Wright is present, Anthony Hylton, the Opposition’s chief whip, is likely to rise to claim that there is a “stranger” sitting on the Opposition side of the House. That, of course, will be a mocking reference to Mr George Wright.

If last week’s episode proves a guide, the Speaker, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, will quickly shut down the complaint, insisting that Mr Wright, the Central Westmoreland member of parliament (MP), is in his rightful place. She will also probably forbid the Hansard writers from recording any intervention on the matter.

Should he be present in the House, Mr Wright must not continue to be silent, cowardly allowing others to fight his battles. Mr Wright, assuming he respects the House as a critical institution of democracy, has a moral obligation toParliament, his constituency and the people of Jamaica to clarify his status in the legislature and the controversy that has swirled around him for months.

It has been widely claimed that Mr Wright is the man captured in a video battering a woman with a stool – an accusation he has not denied, but neither confirmed. The prima facie evidence, though, is not favourable to the MP.

LEAVE OF ABSENCE

Contemporaneous with the emergence of the video, Mr Wright and his partner filed complaints of assault with the police against each other, although both declined afterwards to assist the investigation. However, in the face of the public outcry, and during a national focus on violence against women, the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) eventually removed Mr Wright from its parliamentary caucus and facilitated his application for leave of absence from the legislature.

The JLP subsequently announced Mr Wright’s resignation from the party, but said that he had indicated his continued support for the policies and programmes of the JLP and the Government. Given the circumstances of Mr Wright’s ostensible resignation from the JLP and his reported declaration of support for the Government’s policies and programmes, it is hardly surprising that the Opposition was uneasy having him sit not only on their side of the aisle, but without demarcation between himself, a supposedly independent MP, and the members of the People’s National Party (PNP), who form the official Opposition.

It would have been particularly galling when on his first day back from his truncated leave of absence, Mr Wright sat on the Opposition’s front bench. At the next sitting, the Opposition preemptively caused their shadow health minister, Morais Guy, to occupy the seat, leading to arguments over the protocols for the seating of MPs.

CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT

The Opposition leader, Mark Golding, has made the interesting, and perhaps unique, constitutional argument that given the governing party’s announcement of Mr Wright’s continued support of the administration’s policies, he properly belongs on the Government side of the aisle, notwithstanding his formal departure from the JLP. Speaker Dalrymple-Philibert insists that since he is no longer a member of the government caucus, Mr Wright is appropriately on the opposition benches. Ultimately, it is a prerogative to the Speaker to determine the seating of the House, although it is the tradition of Westminster-type legislatures, with respect to the Opposition,for there to be an obvious demarcation between various groups when more than one party is represented in the legislature.

But how and where he is seated, are not the only contentious issues to be resolved with respect to George Wright. There is first the matter of decency and morality. Mr Wright is morally bound to break his silence on whether he is the man in the video beating the woman. If he is, he should say why he believes that he is morally fit to remain in the legislature. And if he acknowledges a failing and wants another chance, the decent thing, or should have been, to do is to offer a full apology and pray forgiveness.

Further, having relented and allowed an opposition motion calling for Mr Wright to be brought before Parliament’s disciplinary/ethics committee to seek his suspension from the House, Speaker Dalrymple-Philibert should prevail on the leader of government business, Edmund Bartlett, to schedule the debate of the motion. It should not be allowed to fall through the cracks. Most likely, the motion will be defeated, but the matter should be aired.