EDITORIAL: The ghost of the FINSAC inquiry

This newspaper and, we believe, most people who have given the matter serious thought, would not have been surprised at the decision of the Jamaican court to remove retired judge Boyd Carey from the chairmanship of the commission of inquiry probing the collapse of Jamaican financial institutions in the late 1990s.

Where they would have been taken aback is the narrow basis used by justices Lennox Campbell, Paulette Williams, and Leighton Pusey for holding that Mr Carey had to go, followed by the commission's counsel, Mr R.N.A. Henriques, QC.

In Justice Carey's case, the judges ruled that he had been a delinquent borrower from a bank that was eventually taken over by FINSAC, the vehicle used by the Government to intervene in failed financial companies, while Mr Henriques had been a director of firms similarly affected.

In that case, the court held, both men carried the appearance of bias in law, although this did not challenge or undermine their personal integrity.

While this newspaper does not question the the court's ruling and its declarations about their integrity, we believe that Justice Carey's management of the commission's hearing left more than a hint of bias, and that his two co-commissioners, Mr Worrick Bogle and Mr Charles Ross, staggered close to, if they did not fall over, the edge.

It need not have come to this, including the public embarrassment of Justice Carey, if he and his fellow commissioners had listened to us.

Tricky business

Given the heavily invested emotions of the many persons who lost money and had their lives upturned by the financial meltdown and the partisan political references regarding its cause, the management of the inquiry was always going to be a tricky business, demanding clear rules, even-handedly administered.

As this newspaper warned at the start of the hearing, Justice Carey appeared either incapable or unwilling to engage in such an oversight. From the start, he and the other commissioners appeared hostile to certain witnesses, particularly the former Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies, and other public sector financial administrators of the FINSAC period.

Rather than a semi-judicial adversarial process with lawyers orderly questioning witnesses, the hearing room at The Pegasus hotel soon resembled the Coliseum, with the victims being fed to hungry lions.

Hurt debtors and others of the audience, for instance, were made to hurl questions at Dr Davies in a kind for free-for-all. One commissioner even harangued Dr Davies about his policies "to kill off people".

At the outset, we advised the commission that if it recalibrated its procedures it might "still do a useful job". Yet, the lack of decorum continued until the complaints about Dr Davies and others reached the court.

All the parties in this sorry affair can appeal the ruling. We hope they do not. Justice Carey, rather than seek vindication and do further damage to his reputation, should go quietly, considering it merely a decision to recuse himself.

Hopefully, too, aggrieved parties will welcome the appointment of a new and wise chairman who, with the hindsight of the previous debacle, will perform with decorum not previously displayed.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.