Editorial | Name ombudsman now

The smart money is on municipal elections being held in mid-February. Which means, if that time frame is really in play, Prime Minister Andrew Holness will have to announce the date either today or tomorrow, to ensure the 21 days between the announcement of the election and the taking of the poll.

Of course, Mr Holness, if he wishes, could run clock down further and hold the election as late as February 28, the last permissible date under the law that postponed the vote from a year ago.

In any event, Jamaicans will, before the end of February, be called on to cast ballots for the island’s 13 parish-based local government councils, as well as the municipality of Portmore, St Catherine.

What is not so certain – and at this stage seems unlikely – is that these elections will have the benefit of a referee of political good conduct. The position of political ombudsman has been vacant for 14 months, since the seven-year term of the last ombudsman, Donna Parchment Brown, expired in November.

The Government has made it clear that it has no intention of causing the post to be filled in its current form. Which, in the circumstance, is unfortunate.

However, it still is not too late to rescue the situation. Indeed, the Cabinet, at its meeting on Monday, could, and should, ask the governor general, Sir Patrick Allen, to name someone to act in the post, perhaps for two years – until after the next general election, due in 18 months, after which the country can decide on a permanent configuration of the job. If the Government does not act, perhaps interested parties who are keen to have an ombudsman in place should insist that Sir Patrick make an appointment, testing his independence to do so, on the basis of law.

Section 4(2) of the Political Ombudsman (Interim) Act says: “The commission (ombudsman) shall consist of such person as shall be appointed by the Governor-General by instrument under the Broad Seal after consultation with the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition.”

POSITIVE OUTCOME

The ombudsman is one of the positive outcomes forced by the island’s turbulent politics of the 1970s and ‘80s, when ideological cleavages between the main parties were sharp, campaign rhetoric often virulent, and elections were likely to erupt in violence, often with the loss of lives.

Apart from the narrowing of the ideological chasm between the parties, the main fix, starting in 1979, was removing the management of elections from direct political control and placing it with an independent body, which evolved into today’s Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ).

But the political ombudsman was also a significant innovation. The ombudsman, a commission of Parliament, polices a code of conduct agreed to by the parties and investigates infractions or other behaviour by the parties and their candidates that could “prejudice good relations between the supporters of various political parties”.

While the ombudsman has semi-judicial powers, similar to a commission of inquiry, conducting investigations, there is not the authority to impose sanctions. Rather, Ms Parchment Brown and her predecessors made recommendations to offending persons and their party leaders.

That, however, does not mean that the office, as the critics have claimed, is totally ineffective and without authority. The ombudsman’s bully pulpit, and the fact that the office sends reports to Parliament, means that it commands moral force and has the ability to name and shame.

DISINCLINATION

However, as Ms Parchment Brown’s tenure was coming to an end, the Government signalled its disinclination to support a new appointment. It would, instead, subsume the office into the ECJ.

However, the legislation for this has not been brought to Parliament, which the justice minister, Delroy Chuck, who has oversight for electoral matters, attributed to the workload of the legislative draughtsmen and public-sector bureaucracy.

But neither has someone been appointed to act in the role, although business and civil society institutions, such as the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) , which covers non-evangelicals, and election monitors Citizens for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE) have called for a standalone ombudsman.

The JCC, for instance, warned that appending the political ombudsman to the ECJ “risk(ed)… reintroducing concerns and confrontations of a partisan nature and detract from the distinctly apolitical and neutral work of the ECJ”. Or, as CAFFE framed it, it would not be “prudent to submit to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica the ethical questions which are normally dealt with by the political ombudsman”.

All that was required, the organisations argued, is strengthening the powers of the ombudsman, with which this newspaper agrees as an interim measure.

And that is an afternoon’s work of the legal draughtsmen, and even the notoriously lazy Parliament.

Over the longer term, the ombudsman should transition to being the Commissioner for Parliamentary and Political Conduct, a role roughly analogous to the UK’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Standard. Its job would include investigating, on the behalf of Parliament’s Privileges Committee, serious complaints against legislators, some of which might meet the standards for impeachment.

It is perhaps also worth noting that the current Ombudsman Act is interim because Parliament intended the post to be independently anchored in the Constitution.