EDITORIAL - Shifting culture?

The arrest this week of three professionally and socially prominent persons, for allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice and related offences, has sensationally drawn the public's attention to, and ignited wide discussion on, public corruption and its perceived facilitation by people in high places.

The crux of this argument is that there would be little corruption in the bureaucracy, in the absence of blandishments, from private individuals, many of whom are people of power and influence. But this, many people believe, usually escapes robust attention in the policing and prosecution of Jamaica's deep problem of public corruption.

This newspaper, of course, is in no position to, and does not, conclude on the innocence or guilt of the persons - Member of Parliament Daryl Vaz, Bruce Bicknell and Senior Superintendent of Police James Forbes - involved in the instant case.

In fact, we prescribe the jurisprudential principle of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law, and, therefore, agree with Mrs Jacqueline Samuels Brown, the lawyer for SSP Forbes, that the issues ought to be "thrashed out in a clinical, calm atmosphere of a courtroom".

We, nonetheless, appreciate the broader sentiment on how Jamaica, generally, investigates corruption why the current matter would have excited the public's imagination and made the police sergeant at the centre of the bribery case something of a heroic figure.

Mr Bicknell is the head of one of Jamaica's biggest industrial firms; Daryl Vaz has served in the Cabinet and is a businessman; SSP Forbes is a respected policeman, who was at one time seconded to the Port Authority of Jamaica and some considered a potential police chief. They are influential.

So when Sergeant Jubert Llewellyn caused Mr Bicknell to be arrested for allegedly attempting to bribe him to avoid a traffic ticket, that, of itself, whatever the ultimate merit of the charge, would have been important. Despite being allegedly subsequently pressured by Mr Vaz, SSP Forbes, and perhaps others, Sergeant Llewellyn, although he might have wavered, appeared, in the minds of the prosecutors, not to have relented from his allegation.

Encouraging trend

In that regard, and in the absence of outright maliciousness on his part, we can only presume that Sergeant Llewellyn genuinely believed there was an attempt to bribe him. Further, we expect that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions found prima facie evidence to support this conclusion and that the interventions of Mr Vaz and SSP Forbes amounted to bids to pervert the course of justice and, in Mr Vaz's case, breached the Corruption Prevention Act.

Whatever the eventual outcome of the case, a few things are significant.

First, although it may be changing, it has not been the culture of Jamaica's police force for its members to pursue, with any rigour, cases against its members, especially senior ones. Nor is it expected that junior members will show steadfastness on perceived matters of principle against senior ones. Nor are we accustomed to seeing powerful people taken to court on claims of attempting to corrupt public officials - and certainly not at the insistence of a junior policeman.

We have faith in the courts to arrive at a just decision on the case. But the fact that it happened should help to shore up our institutions and strengthen faith in them.

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