Mr Holness and Alice's looking glass

by Daniel Thwaites

Media coverage of politics is difficult for all involved. Few candidates feel fairly treated, and because straight reporting, opinion and commentary, and the ever-encroaching public relations all have to exist on the same written page or in the same radio or television broadcast, the public has to be increasingly sophisticated and critical about what they are hearing and seeing.

So far, I am in some agreement with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who made some of these very points while in the process of launching a sustained broadside against the media at a meeting in Manchester. But he went further, intimating that there was some widespread manhandling and mistreatment of the Government by the media more generally.

At least to me, his comments were unexpected, since coverage of him personally has been uniformly adulatory, and coverage of his party has been very restrained, if not tepid. In fact, prominent media outlets are quite shamelessly inviting the public to see recent events through Alice's looking glass, where down is up and up is down.

Probity versus rot

According to this editorial line, when a party has its leader, deputy leader and chairman all resign Cabinet positions within a year because of separate monumental scandals, that is absolute proof of probity. Based on this absurd logic, the avalanche of resignations and investigations proves the Golding/Holness administration is the most transparent in Jamaican history, just like the Nixon-Ford administration was the most transparent in American history. Public relations is an amazing art! Similarly, after the nine-month defence of Dudus and conspiring against the country's interests, the Government is asking us to accept the decline in crimes as an 'achievement'.

Take the editorial commen-tary about Mike 'Running Man' Henry's resignation. Is it the first major blow in a massive and widening scandal where persistent warnings by the contractor general, civil society and the Opposition were ignored? Or is it a symbol of transparency and accountability already neatly packaged and tucked away so that Mr Shaw and the prime minister needn't detain themselves with any further questions?

At the PAC meeting last week, it emerged, from the calculations of Central St Mary MP, Dr Morais Guy, that the JDIP funds are mostly earmarked for profits and administrative expenses: 25 per cent to China Harbour; 10 per cent to the major subcontractor; 10 per cent to sub-subcontractor; five per cent to the NWA; 2.5 per cent to the Road Maintenance Fund. In total, therefore, some 52.5 per cent of the money borrowed will be eaten up before they draw a truckload of marl. Of course, the taxpayer will be responsible for 100 per cent, plus interest, to repay the loan. Did you hear this in the regular reportorial media?

Protecting Mike

Standing in-between the country and Minister Henry was leader of government business in the House, Mr Holness. Have the media carefully reported how he blocked discussion of JDIP, shut down debate on the programme, and paid no heed or urgency to the questions about it? The Trafigura controversy, which shook the PNP out of power four years ago, involved some $30 million which, according to JDIP math, is not enough to fix 10 feet of road in the minister of finance and tracing's constituency.

There is more. Come to think of it, whatever happened to the follow-up media stories on those chairs from the UDC? Have they been swept under the carpet? Whatever happened to an investigation into those Pegasus shares, through which the Government seems to have made a phenomenal giveaway of public value? Whatever happened to that forensic audit requested for Caymanas Track Limited? Has that horse run?

If there isn't yet such a thing, it may be time to invent a 'pre-election' resignation for some candidates who have vaulted on to the political platform from previous government appoint-ments. Naturally, this would be further looking-glass proof of all being well.

When the debate impasse came up, there was a substantive story and a titillating one. One side insisted that the most pressing economic issue of the day, the IMF, be off the table. The other side expressed a preference for a team format. What were the headlines? Was it: 'Government afraid to debate IMF'?

No, sah! Mr Holness ought not to have any complaints about the media. He ought to be thanking them.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York, and currently qualifying for the Jamaican Bar. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.