EDITORIAL: Tough lessons on government transition

The commissioners enquiring into the Golding administration's handling of the United States' request for the extradition of reputed gangster Christopher Coke will, in time, declare on the secret memoranda signed by the former national security minister, Dr Peter Phillips.

However, the current Government's declared ignorance of the documents until their existence was raised by US officials at the height of the Coke affair highlights flaws in our approach to transition in government, which requires fixing.

First, these memoranda have been the source of much controversy. Lawyers for Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) see in them an opportunity to deflect from the charges by their critics that the Government's long delay in acceding to Coke's extradition was a corrupt attempt to protect a JLP backer, whose operational base was in the prime minister's parliamentary constituency.

They suggest that the documents impinge on the constitutional rights of Jamaicans to freedom of communication, and that Dr Phillips breached the fundamental principle of collective responsibility of a Cabinet by failing to take the agreements to it before signing them.

Dr Phillips' position, broadly, is that these documents created no new obligations on behalf of the Jamaican Government.

Rather, he argued, they codified operational understandings and systems under which the security organisation of Jamaica, the United States, and Great Britain shared information from intercepted communication. The system prospered from enhanced intercept capabilities under a project code-named Anthem, in which the foreign partners participated. But Dr Phillips insisted that intercepts could only be done in conformity with Jamaican law.

Ignorance

The lawyers, we expect, will continue to haggle over these issues.

However, nothing raised so far adequately explains to us the ignorance of our Government to the existence of the documents. Or, that ought not to have been the case if - whatever the emotions with which politicians may wrestle in the aftermath of an election - we approached transitions from the larger context of national interest rather than the base sense of being victor or vanquished.

In the instant case, a number of developments appeared to have flowed from the latter approach, assuming that what was said at the enquiry was the truth.

National Security Minister Dwight Nelson reported that Mr Derrick Smith, Prime Minister Golding's first appointee to the portfolio, knew nothing of the documents.

However, Dr Phillips testified that he offered, "more than once", to brief the incoming Mr Smith on issues relevant to his portfolio. The offer, Dr Phillips claimed, was not accepted, which, if true, was most unfortunate.

Such a transition briefing would have afforded Mr Smith an opportunity to be brought up to speed on the security issues and the contextual thinking of his predecessor on various actions and issues and obligations that flowed therefrom.

Additionally, there seems, to us, to have been a failure on the part of the civil service and security officials to properly brief Mr Smith and Prime Minister Golding, in his role as minister of defence, about privileged arrangements and their supporting infrastructure. Unless it is that they lacked curiosity about these things.

National interest must trump either peeve on the part of those who lose an election, or triumphalism among those who win, especially with regard to security considerations. It may be useful for us to codify transition procedures, particular with regard to matters of national security.

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.