Editorial | Name an ombudsman, but …

It seems that the Holness administration remains uncertain about what should be the fate of the Office of the Political Ombudsman, which has remained vacant since Donna Parchment-Brown’s term expired nearly a year ago.

Like the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), and others, this newspaper supports the appointment of a new ombudsman, but on an interim basis until the government figures out how the job should be restructured and what responsibilities it should have. For while the ombudsman, as the justice minister, Delroy Chuck, has observed, didn’t have power to enforce sanctions against errant politicians, her rulings carried moral weight, even when ignored. The public noticed.

We, however, continue to hold to our previous recommendation of ombudsman, renamed Commissioner for Parliamentary and Political Conduct, with broader responsibilities, including some of those contemplated in Mark Golding’s impeachment bill for sanctions against legislators deemed to have engaged in behaviour so egregious as to make them deserving of significant punishment, up to removal from Parliament.

When Ms Parchment-Brown’s seven-year term ended last November, the government signalled its intention to subsume the office into the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ).

BAD IDEA

That is a bad idea, which shouldn’t be pursued. It poses the danger of dragging the ECJ – whose role is to manage the mechanics of the island’s electoral process – into the raw politics of election campaigns. With the ECJ having representatives from the major political parties, throwing into its purview matters occurring on the hustings would lead to unending, unproductive quarrels that distract from its core mission.

The office of the political ombudsman, like the ECJ, was one of the products of Jamaica’s fraught political history, from which the island has substantially advanced, but hasn’t yet left completely behind. There is not any more the gratuitous violence and voting irregularities that marred elections of three to four decades ago. There are nonetheless residual linkages between the institutions of politics and the old attitudes and behaviours. Garrison communities, or zones of political exclusion, still exist.

That is part of the context of why Jamaica’s political parties, prodded by civil society, agreed that they should adhere to a code of political behaviour, policed by an independent body. They went further. That oversight arrangement was embedded in legislation, including having the political ombudsman report to Parliament.

Although the law gives the ombudsman significant powers to investigate breaches of the code of conduct, or behaviours that could inflame tensions between political supporters, it provides no power to sanction. The office can only recommend actions.

Simply dumping the office into the ECJ, without more, won’t change that. In the electoral office, the ombudsman would become a secondary appendage of even less consequence than its detractors now claim of it. Further, there would have to be significant legislative and organisational action for the ECJ to accommodate the ombudsman.

It requires nothing to reinstate the office in its current form, except for an exceedingly minor amendment to change the tenure of the office to a shorter period, up to the time when it is anticipated that the reform would be completed.

MATTER OF URGENCY

Having an ombudsman in place at this time, and as a matter of urgency, makes sense on two fronts. First, Jamaica is already in campaign mode for the municipal elections to be held early next year. The campaign is assuming the characteristics of a general election for the national parliament: for the opposition, a referendum of sorts on the government; and for the administration, a vindication of its stewardship.

This intensity will deepen beyond what has begun to emerge. As the PSOJ’s president, Metry Seaga, observed in August, in the absence of the political ombudsman, political players feel themselves empowered to say anything on the hustings, regardless of truth or the harm their statements may cause the society or individuals. Even without the “teeth” Mr Seaga wants implanted into the ombudsman, the presence of the office itself imposes some restraint. A sort of moral arbiter.

This newspaper’s longer-term expectation, however, is that a new format of the office will, in addition to its current job, assume a role similar to that of the UK’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards – an independent, non-partisan office that investigates complaints about the conduct of MPs (other than matters dealt with by the committee on privileges), thereby providing the information that forms the basis for deliberations by the Commons committee on standards. Notably the majority of the members of the committee on standards are lay people – not members of parliament.

Under Mr Golding’s proposed impeachment law, complaints against a legislator would be forwarded to an impeachment committee made up of legislators. They would determine if a prima facie case was made out against the person complained about, in which event the matter would go to a five-member tribunal, at least two of whom have to be judges.

The list of public bodies and officials who, in Mr Golding’s bill, could make impeachment complaints, is unassailable, Nonetheless, it would make sense that there be a standing Commissioner of Parliamentary and Political Conduct to whom the public could complain about the conduct of legislators in their capacity as parliamentarians and expect a thorough, non-partisan investigation of the alleged behaviour. In matters that the commissioner felt were worthy of investigation, the legislator would either be vindicated, or where a prima facie case was determined, the information forwarded to the appropriate parliamentary committee with recommendations for its action.