Leys, lies and lawyers

Ian Boyne, Contributor

The day Minister of Justice and Attorney General Dorothy Lightbourne takes her seat at the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry - assuming she recovers soon from her illness - this country will be totally shut down, with the largest live television audience ever since Usain Bolt's performance at the Olympics. And the day she faces K.D. Knight, many believe it will be nothing less than a Knightmare.

This is our equivalent to the O.J. Simpson trial in America. Copycat Jamaica has waited long, but our day has finally arrived. The esteemed Marshall McLuhan said famously, "The medium is the message." Nowhere can ordinary Jamaicans see this as graphically demonstrated as in the weekday drama series beamed live from the Jamaica Conference Centre. And our actors are good - world-class.

The serious-minded Observer obviously meant well when it decried in its Thursday editorial: 'Dudus/Manatt enquiry becoming a legal circus', with its one egregious error being that this is not a legal circus, it is a political one. The lawyering is merely the method. But more fundamentally, in contradistinction to that editorial, this commission, in our tribalised political culture, could be nothing less than a battle of political wills, wits and nerves.

Skillful cast

The best talents are out on display, with our most legendary in the cast - Frank Phipps, Hugh Small, K.D. Knight, Lloyd Barnett, Winston Spaulding, Patrick Atkinson, with director Emile George. But we have also discovered a great new talent - the young, American-accented Oliver Smith, a razor-sharp, surgical and compulsively protective defence counsel who is worth far more than whatever Douglas Leys is paying him.

If I ever get into any trouble with the law - God forbid - it is Oliver Smith I want, for I can think of no more an intrusive and interventionist defence attorney locally. He has annoyed the hell out of the contentious Patrick Atkinson with his incessant - though not frivolous - and often piercingly penetrating objections; and has saved the too-straight-talking Leys from his inquisitors (and Leys himself) countless times. As someone who has a little acquaintance with interviewing and apologetics, I say this fellow is good!

The quality of the lawyering has been generally of a very high standard. Not only young lawyers but journalists should be observing keenly how people conduct rigorous interviews, think on their feet, as it were, and work masterfully and irrevocably towards a crescendo.

In this whole Manatt-Dudus national controversy, a lot of careless assumptions, surmising, speculation, and non sequitur reasoning have been substituted for hard, cold analysis. Knight and Phipps have been beacons of thoroughness, hard research and mastery of information. Backslidden Labourite Patrick Atkinson has impressed, even as he needs to lose some of the abrasiveness and insolence towards backslidden but gentlemanly Comrade Hugh Small. But the formidable Atkinson does his homework and the sting of it was evidenced by Oliver Smith's frequent incursions.

The People's National Party's (PNP) lawyers know that this commission is not about what the commissioners will write up after the commission ends. The people are making up their minds - and perhaps changing them - daily as the commission proceeds, and the PNP lawyers are seeking to win day by day. K.D. is the master at shooting for the compelling sound bites. His devastating and adroitly crafted questions are all designed to force the pungent, one-word, one-line answers that work best for the evening news - and worst for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). But don't be just dazzled by K.D.'s theatrics - all this come at the price of hard, painstaking work with information and a commanding intellectual diligence.

Political craftsmanship

The PNP, as masters of political craftsmanship and public relations, has been arranging regular press briefings to ensure that if they do not get sufficient sound bites from the enquiry itself - or if things swing against them there that day - they can frame the issues to suit their own narrative. Excellent strategy! The PNP knows this commission is a big gamble for Prime Minister Bruce Golding and it is determined that he must lose and it must be the victor at the end of the day, despite the Golding-JLP's brand-name team.

There has been one issue emerging from the commission so far which has threatened to push the tide against the PNP, but the party, skilled as it is at framing issues and at political communications, has been working hard, with help of its sympathisers in the media, to scuttle its explosiveness. It is the view that Peter Phillips sold out Jamaicans with his secret memoranda of understanding (MOU). This can have some emotiveness at the grass-roots levels.

When the issue arose, Atkinson adeptly brushed it aside as a "sideshow" and insignificant, a tried and tested tactic of deflection in apologetics, when you are under pressure. Because the human-rights lobby has been so influential in the media and has managed to gain some traction in positing individual liberty over community security, a narrative which Phipps has deliberately tried to exploit - if this 'sell-out' perception grows, the PNP would have much to lose from this commission. It has been interesting to hear some PNP apologists sounding so conservative and almost employing notions of the national-security state in defending Phillips' so-called secret MOUs.

My position is philosophically consistent. Contra Phipps, Perkins and other human-rights fundamentalists, I support any MOU - 'secret'or otherwise - which privileges community and national security over personal liberties. For if the State is threatened, individual liberty cannot be protected. Peter Phillips, as minister of national security, made a significant assault on organised and transnational crime and if he signed an agreement with the United States to protect this State and to put away drug kingpins, this country owes him a debt of gratitude. I am unambiguous on this.

Don't judge too quickly

But Lloyd D'Aguilar on the left and Perkins and others on the right would disagree with me. Some progressives in the PNP would normally disagree with me on this, too, as they do on hard-policing, but their partisanship precludes them from taking their 'human rights' position on this issue. I am happy I don't have to carry the burden of any party loyalty.

K.D. and Atkinson will have to work hard to protect Peter against this sell-out charge which is already resonating on the street. I am happy that people like Bert Samuels - and even A.J. Nicholson - have been saying that we should not come to the conclusion that Minister Lightbourne lied until we have heard her testimony. As difficult as it might seem for her to plausibly explain how she could have had conversations with people who said they never spoke for a second and not to have known things reportedly said to her by people not known as adversaries, we should wait.

There is a biblical passage which says, "Every man first seems right until another comes and examines him." It is still good advice. As we say in Jamaica, 'a nuh suppen weh a go; a suppen weh a come'. Let's wait and see.

I believe Golding will have more to gain than to lose when he appears before the commission. I don't think K.D., Patrick or whoever will bury him. I think when Golding appears, you are going to see the full brilliance of Hugh Small. (But watch out for that display even before then when he cross-examines Peter Phillips. For me, that will be an intellectual delight.)

Hugh Small will unpack and clinically deconstruct assumptions, unwarranted conclusions and sloppy thinking. Yes, let us have the best legal minds on both sides battle it out and we will judge who has the better arguments - and where the truth might lie (oops!). I don't expect Golding to be tripped up under cross-examination, and I am telling you, K.D. Knight will be at his absolute best. If K.D. can't nail him, nobody else can. I will not be missing that encounter. Golding has come into this with most people believing that he has lied to the country, that he tried to protect Dudus for political reasons and that he has squandered his moral authority.

He has given in to this commission after enormous public pressure. Clovis was dead right in his cartoon on Thursday: It is disingenuous at best and gross hypocrisy at worst to dismiss the commission as a waste of public funds and a diversion when, it was civil-society groups and the media which pounded Golding into setting it up. And now we want another commission investigating how 73 angels were killed in the Tivoli incursion!

Also, speaking of civil society, its outspoken representatives and human-rights activists must speak up firmly, decisively and uncompromisingly about the right of public servants to tell the truth under oath, even if they embarrass their political bosses. We should not be talking about the impossibility of Douglas Leys' working with Dorothy Lightbourne if he is telling the truth. If Leys is telling the truth, he should be honoured, not marginalised. He should be lionised and eulogised as an example of integrity and probity in public life. And the prime pinister should feel compelled to do that.

Our shame

Why should Leys be seen as as 'suicide bomber' if he is, indeed, telling the truth? It is to our shame and scandal, as a society, that someone like Leys would not feel honoured to speak the truth, but rather fear its consequences. We must build a culture in which truth-telling is given premium value - and protection. I am not saying Leys is telling the truth. I am saying that people who work for the State must feel protected by us in media and civil society when they speak under oath ( I don't believe in breaching confidentiality). Politicians must not be free to victimise them while we sit by on our verandahs and deplore the lack of integrity in public life.

I have said before that our political tribalism makes for a weak foundation for freedom of expression and press freedom. Rather than speculating about what will happen to Leys if his boss is really lying, we should make him know no one dare touch him once we have breath. It's time we change the honour code and truly put Jamaica, not party, first.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.