Editorial | Buchanan, Pyke, DPP

Isat Buchanan’s crude remarks about Paula Llewellyn last week injected crassness into a serious debate. It was a reminder, however, that there are battles that women still need to win, and of the value of civility in public discourse.

For notwithstanding the likely posture of free speech absolutists, it says much about our society – and in this case, perhaps about Mr Buchanan – that the first impulse in a debate involving a woman is to invoke sexual innuendo. Or, as Mr Buchanan did, an explicit recommendation thereof.

In commending to Ms Llewellyn the lyrics of the jailed, but still popular dancehall artiste, Vybz Kartel, Mr Buchanan, it is reasonable to assume, expected no consequences. That is usually the norm. Which carries the odour of misogyny, or the residue of bigoted sexism, despite legislative declarations of gender equality and the fact that in most areas of life in Jamaica, where opportunities open and the playing field is fair, women outperform men. Education is the most obvious of these.

Happily, Mr Buchanan has apologised and was made to resign as chairman of the human-rights commission of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP), whose women’s organisation, quite appropriately, denounced his statement. Rightly, too, he was censured by many Jamaicans.

But for a time, Mr Buchanan appropriately became a primary subject of discussion, deflecting attention from the matter he supposedly intended to engage: the Government’s Nicodemus-style amendment of Jamaica’s Constitution to lift the retirement age of the director of public prosecutions (DPP) and the auditor general (AuG) from 60 t0 65 – and attendant controversies. While the official retirement age will be 65, people in those posts may, by special arrangement, be allowed to continue until they are 70.

CONTROVERSIAL

It should have been obvious to the administration that its approach to the amendments was bound to be controversial, with the risk of placing the office of the DPP in the middle of a political brawl.

The Government claims that its aim is to bring the DPP and AuG in line with the rest of the public sector at large, following the passage of a new pension law in 2017. But it is seemingly clear that the speed and urgency with which the deed was done (the Opposition was notified on the previous day about the bill which was tabled, debated and passed the same afternoon when Parliament recessed) apparently to facilitate Ms Llewellyn, the DPP, remaining in office at the expiry of her current contract, presumably next month, when she turns 63.

Under the old arrangement, Ms Llewellyn was required to demit office in 2020 on her 60th birthday, but, as was allowable, received special dispensation to continue, which could have been up to age 65. Then, like now, the Opposition was vehemently against the extension.

There is nothing wrong, on the face of it, in increasing the retirement age of the DPP and the AuG. But this newspaper, as we noted previously, has fundamental questions of principle relating to the sanctity of the Constitution and democratic governance, over how this matter has been handled.

On a straight reading of the Constitution, the Government appeared on firm procedural ground in how it passed the amendments: a majority of all the members of either chamber of Parliament. The relevant clauses are not deeply entrenched, so they did not require passage by special majorities, and the bill did not need to sit on the table of the House for extended periods before debate and vote.

SACROSANCT

However, the Constitution, the fundamental law, ought to be sacrosanct, and dealt with as such. No change to the Constitution is a small matter. It therefore offends this fundamental principle when an amendment to the Constitution is rushed through in a single afternoon without prior notice or discussion, especially in the absence of a legitimate case of urgency.

Further, in pushing through the amendment, the Government circumvented its sitting Constitutional Review Committee, while insisting that other issues on which there have been calls for urgent action must be subject to the review process. Additionally, there are best-practice issues regarding the DPP and AuG that ought to be addressed in any constitutional amendments of those offices.

Instead, and unfortunately, the debate about the amendments now revolves primarily around Ms Llewellyn, who has found herself in an accusatory tit-for-tat with one of her deputies, Kathy Ann Pyke, who, in a letter to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, not only questioned, on a conceptual basis, the constitutionality of the amendment, but Ms Llewellyn’s suitability to stay in the job.

The DPP responded with a long public defence of her tenure and of Ms Pyke’s character and behaviour on the job. She announced that the Public Service Commission would be invited to investigate her “unprofessional conduct”.

In light of all that has transpired, including Ms Pyke’s letter and the DPP’s response, that process has to be independent, fair and transparent, and should probably also cover all the issues raised by the parties, perhaps in the fashion of David Muirhead’s early 2000s review of the office when Kent Pantry was the DPP.