A tangled mess

The Editor, Sir:

Government spokesman Daryl Vaz has acknowledged that the handling of the Manatt affair was a mess from the start. What he has not said explicitly, or perhaps not appreciated, is that from the start it was a misconception for Prime Minister Bruce Golding to even believe that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) could have retained this law firm on a treaty matter simply by having the party come up with the cash for the fees (if indeed this is what was done).

The situation can be illustrated thus: a 20-year-old university student is before the court on a criminal offence and wants to retain an attorney-at-law. But he has no funds. Instead, Daddy restrains his anger long enough to ever so slowly take the cash out of his pocket for the fee. Who is the client ? The student or the dad? The dad has no business before the court; the student does. The attorney will have a duty of confidentiality to the student, not the father.

Not impossible but ...

While it is not impossible for a political party to retain a lobbyist to do certain kinds of business with a government, the only business Manatt seems to have had with the US government dealt with treaty issues. This is government-to-government business and as the published emails in The Sunday Gleaner prove, Manatt had every right to believe that in communicating with the solicitor general it was representing the Government on treaty issues. Who else could it be representing - never mind who may have paid the fee - in a treaty matter? Just as the father had no business before the court, the JLP never had, and could never have had, any business before the US government on treaty issues.

For Golding, among the many lessons of this saga is this one: leave plumbing to plumbers, dentistry to dentists and legal matters to qualified attorneys hired or appointed to do the job. Playing Johnny Cochrane or the Rum Shop QC, can bring you only grief.

I am, etc.,

ERROL W.A. TOWNSHEND

ewat@rogers.com