EDITORIAL - Lightbourne must go

Dorothy Lightbourne, Jamaica's justice minister and attorney general, is a bright and, at a personal level, good and decent individual who has given long and respectful service to the country's legal profession.

But it seems to this newspaper that it would be in the interest of Ms Lightbourne herself, and the administration of which she is a member, that she resigns from both positions. Such a move, we believe, would help to shore up public perception of integrity in the offices that Ms Lightbourne now occupies and signal that Prime Minister Bruce Golding is now serious about running a government that is accountable, which Jamaicans can trust.

Indeed, we need not look beyond Ms Lightbourne's handling of the Christopher Coke extradition matter for reasons why reasonable people will consider the minister's continued occupation of her portfolios as untenable.

Ultimate responsibility

As attorney general, Ms Lightbourne is the senior legal adviser to the Government. It was she, therefore, who must bear ultimate responsibility for recommending to Mr Golding that evidence used by the United States to support its request for Mr Coke, the alleged narcotics trafficker and gunrunner, was flawed.

Indeed, Ms Lightbourne was herself so convinced of her position that for nine months she, as the justice minister, declined to sign an order so that extradition proceedings could begin against Mr Coke, and only recently asked the courts for a declaration on the correctness of her position. She swore affidavits in stout defence of the ostensible legal and judicial principles by which she stood for nearly a year.

Ditched principles

Suddenly, with Mr Golding's about-face on the matter, Ms Lightbourne ditched her principles and, at the PM's instruction, signed the extradition order. So, for nine months, Ms Lightbourne risked Jamaica's relations with a close partner and the country's internal stability for principles that were dispensable once Mr Golding was caught in a political lie. It, in the circumstances, would not be unreasonable if people were to question whether there were principles other than legal ones that Ms Lightbounre sought to protect in this affair.

But it is not only her handling of the Coke affair that has caused concern with Ms Lightbourne. It is widely held that she has been not a particularly effective justice minister. For instance, despite all the talk about the reform of the judicial system, little has happened to lessen the backlog in the courts and to improve their efficiency.

Moreover, the drafting of new legislation, critical and social and economic development have slowed and a parliamentary select committee on libel-legislation reform, chaired by Ms Lightbourne, appears mired in inertia.

Perhaps the weight of office is just too much for the minister.

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