EDITORIAL - Mr Golding squandered a grand chance

Our suspicion is that Prime Minister Bruce Golding, although badly battered and seriously compromised by the Christopher Coke extradition affair, is not going anywhere.At least, not immediately.

By now his leadership will have been fully endorsed by a risk-averse Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which will have concluded that it has no alternative to Mr Golding. So, we can expect a seemingly chastened and humbled prime minister to apologise for having misled the country about what he knew - and when he knew it - of the hiring by the JLP of US lobbyists to soften America's demand for the extradition of Mr Coke.

Mr Golding might well succeed in patching up, if not fully repairing, his image. And the governing JLP will cling to office, in part because the People's National Party has yet to win back the support of the majority of the Jamaicans, who threw it out of office less than three years ago.

But this country will have paid dearly for Mr Golding's unfathomable resistance to America's efforts to extradite Mr Coke, who the United States wants to put on trial for alleged narco-trafficking and gunrunning. This price is not only the potential souring of relations with a key ally. The Jamaican economy is also being hurt.

In the past nine months, Mr Golding and his administration have spent a great deal of time defending the attorney general's decision not to sign an extradition order for Mr Coke, who is close to the JLP, which would have allowed the courts to decide whether the Americans have made out a prima facie case against him.

There has also been the controversy over whether the US law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips was engaged on behalf of the Government - which Manatt insists was the case - to lobby the US authorities in the Coke affair. After months of claiming almost ignorance of the matter, Mr Golding has now admitted that he 'sanctioned' a deal with Manatt in his persona as leader of the JLP, but not as prime minister.

The quarrels over the Coke affair and the time that Mr Golding and his ministers have spent concocting the defence of their actions would have been better allocated to tackling Jamaica's deep social and economic crisis.

Consensus needed

For instance, in February the private sector, understanding the need to deal with the wide fiscal deficit, supportedthe rescheduling of the country's domestic debt, accepting a sharp cut in agreed interest payments. The so-called Jamaica Debt Exchange is to be supported by a restructuring of the public sector, on which officials are already at work.One consequence of this project will be a loss of public-sector jobs.

As Mr Golding is no doubt aware, large transformational issues are best concluded in an atmosphere of trust. In other words, the difficult job of overhauling and resuscitating Jamaica's anaemic economy is not only a hard job, but will cause pain. The process is easier if there is consensus.

It is the probability of building that consensus that Mr Golding has sacrificed by appearing to elevate the defence of Christopher Coke to the top and centre of the national interest and by lying to the country about his role in the scheme. The PM now has an uphill task in repairing things and rebuilding trust.

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