Editorial | Speaker on a bad path

This newspaper still hopes that Juliet Holness will be a transformative Speaker of Jamaica’s Parliament, in a fashion that enhances the legislature’s oversight of the executive and deepens the country’s democracy.

But we are aware that as a general principle leaders tend early to lock themselves into a mode, which they find difficult to transcend, and which, therefore, comes to determine their tenure. Put another way, people who are in charge usually have a narrow window to define themselves and how they will govern.

Ms Holness has been in the post for only a month, so she still has to adjust and not succumb to the limiting foibles of her predecessor, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, who resigned over allegations that she abused a duty concession scheme for public officials.

Unfortunately thus far, rather than expansiveness, Ms Holness has, in the Speaker’s chair, adopted a kind of pre-Lost in Space deliberate, robotic clunkiness, which may be interpreted as a lack of creativity on her part, or a signal, or mask of malign intent. We choose to assume the former. That is welcoming of, or at least entertains, debate and, thus, an openness to concessions.

Even as we welcomed her possibility for good, this newspaper, prior to her election, identified in Ms Holness’ conception of how Parliament should function, a constricting woodenness that was potentially empowering of the executive, limiting to backbenchers, especially those on the Opposition’s side of the aisle.

Part of the problem with the functioning of Parliament, Ms Holness had complained, was that the rules, the Standing Orders, weren’t being enforced. Things had become too relaxed.

“We must go back to what is the rule or change the rules if we do not believe they meet the purpose of Parliament,” she said.

The best Speakers of Parliament, in any jurisdiction, do not entertain free-for-all in their Houses or the evisceration of the Standing Orders. But neither do they embrace rigidities, or, as appeared to have happened with Ms Dalrymple-Philibert, allow themselves to be trapped into party loyalties.

AWARE OF PITFALLS

Ms Holness has to be aware of those pitfalls, and therefore be exceedingly circumspect of approaches such as the one she has so far adopted regarding the sharing of an opinion by the attorney general, Derrick McKoy, on how Parliament should deal with reports sent to it by its commissions and some official bodies.

Ms Dalrymple-Philibert had requested that report after she declined to table investigative reports sent to Parliament by the Integrity Commission and the auditor general. The former Speaker had contended that the law required that the portfolio ministers for the agencies that are the subject of the reports be allowed two months to review them before they are tabled. They would also possibly be sent to the relevant parliamentary committee for review ahead of publication.

Ms Holness, while acting as speaker in the absence of her predecessor, had caused the reports by the Integrity Commission to be tabled, apparently on the basis that the law upon which Ms Dalrymple-Philibert relied did apply to that body. It is not clear what informed the decision, other than perhaps the passage of time, to table those by the auditor general.

NOT PUBLISHED

Moreover, Mr McKoy’s opinion has not been published, except, apparently, for a short extract read – without context, according to Opposition member of parliament Julian Robinson – to the House by Ms Dalrymple-Philibert, before she exited the legislature.

Mr Robinson wants all MPs, and by extension, the public, to have access to the letter. Which seems entirely reasonable to this newspaper. This bit of transparency would hardly compromise national security.

Ms Holness has been circular, almost dissembling, on the question. She didn’t, when asked originally, have an issue with members asking that the document be shared with them, but delayed giving a definitive answer to the request.

On Tuesday, when Mr Robinson asked again, Ms Holness said she wanted to discuss the matter, and presumably Mr McKoy’s opinion (which she suggested wasn’t complete) with the President of the Senate and the leader and deputy leader of the House.

Ms Holness also made this curious, and the specific context of this matter, this intellectually baffling comment: “ The House did not write the attorney general. The Speaker did…”

As Mr Robinson observed, Mr McKoy’s opinion was not requested in a vacuum. It was in the context of a controversy of Speaker Dalrymple-Philibert’s handling of the reports. It wasn’t a private brief, for which she would need to engage the personal law, rather than the one employed to advise the state and its institutions.

Ms Holness may be right that Parliament need not follow the advice of the attorney general. She can be steadfast against other bodies “stipulating how we function as a House”. What she is absolutely wrong about is hemming-hawing about transparency. That usually doesn’t bode well for good governance.