EDITORIAL - Flaccid report, but process of value

There was substantial value to the commission of enquiry into the administration's botched handling of America's request for the extradition of the alleged crime boss, Christopher Coke, but it is not to be found in the report submitted by Mr Emil George and company.

Indeed, Mr George, Mr Donald Scharschmidt and Mr Anthony Irons will forgive us for concluding that their report - whose sternest reprimand was reserved for misbehaving lawyers at the hearings - lacks the expected rigour and was crafted to avoid offence.

"Mistakes and errors of judgement were made, but no one in our view was guilty of misconduct in the part he or she played in the matter of the extradition of Mr Coke," they concluded. "It is regrettable that the memories of some of these witnesses failed them at the enquiry."

Coke, of course, was the 'don' of Tivoli Gardens, the political heartland of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in Prime Minister Bruce Golding's constituency, where he wielded great influence. Coke was close to the JLP.

When the Americans sought to extradite him on gun and cocaine charges, the Golding administration delayed for nine months, tucked in behind what many people believed to be a contrivance about the breach of Mr Coke's constitutional right because of the manner in which wiretap information was passed to United States investigators.

The ruling party hired lobbyists to help carry Jamaica's case with the Americans and there was intermingling of the state's and party's efforts to persuade the Americans to go soft on the case.

The commissioners agreed that Coke's rights were breached, but held that the justice minister, Dorothy Lightbourne, should legally have signed the extradition request and cause the merit of the arguments to be determined by a magistrate. Her failure to do so was merely a misinterpretation of her powers.

It was "imprudent of the prime minister", they held, to to cause his party's involvement in a matter involving diplomatic relations between Jamaica and the United States, leading to the hiring of the lobbyists.

But that, for the commission, was that.

Report found wanting

Nor did the commissioners, at least in their report, seriously explore the contradictory evidence of Ms Lightbourne and the solicitor general about when she knew of the entry of the lobbyists into the affair, and what she knew and what ought to be made of the evidence. Indeed, they spent all of two pages reviewing the credibility of witnesses - a cursory expenditure of effort of questionable value.

The commissioners made the point that they were not a court, but appeared to approach their job in a context of narrow legalism and eschewing expansive thinking and a robust engagement of ideas.

Our assessment notwithstanding, we expect others, including civil-society groups, that called for the enquiry will have their own determining, having digested the report.

But whatever the weaknesses of this document, the process for arriving at it was good for Jamaica.

It was televised, a first for the country. People saw their leaders and other high officials being cross-examined and held accountable. That has value for democratic governance.

It is unlikely, we believe, that in the future the lines between the Jamaican state and a governing party will not become so blurred in the conduct of diplomacy, or that a government will again manage an extradition request in the manner of Coke's.

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