EDITORIAL - We don't believe the Ellington story

Peter Bunting and Owen Ellington must know that no one believes they are telling the truth, or at least are giving the whole story, about the latter's dramatic decision to retire as commissioner of police.

Indeed, it has quickly developed into a parlour game of speculation whether Mr Ellington was pushed by his political boss, Mr Bunting, and if so, why, or if there was a major development in the police death-squad investigation - other than the commissioner wanting to remove any perception of, or potential for, intervention by him that would have triggered the decision.

The scepticism will be further fuelled by the seeming parallel between the manner of Mr Ellington's departure and the exits of other recent predecessors of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. They have all been shrouded in haze.

Perhaps the clearest of all was that of the late Trevor MacMillan in the latter half of the 1990s. He had a clear falling out with the administration of the day, played hard to get, then was perceived to have snubbed the sitting prime minister, P.J. Patterson. Colonel MacMillan's successor, Francis Forbes, after eight years on the job, decided to retire with seeming abruptness in 2005, aged 55. Lucius Thomas, his successor, left two years later at 57. There followed the interregnum between Mr Thomas and Mr Ellington, with a short, blurry, on-again, off-again tenure by Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin.

In the case of Mr Ellington, two reasons have been offered for his decision: the one about allowing space for the investigation by INDECOM of the alleged death squad in the Clarendon Police Division, for which four officers have already been arrested and the probing of which Mr Ellington insisted had his full support.

The other is because of the imminent commission of enquiry into the Tivoli Gardens/west Kingston operation by the security forces, seeking to arrest the mobster, Christopher Coke. At least 76 civilians died in that operation. Human-rights groups claim that many of those deaths were extrajudicial killings by police and soldiers.

Sudden moral position

On the issue of the planned enquiry, whose start date is yet to be announced, it is surprising that it is only at this point, more than four years after the fact, that Mr Ellington has arrived at this moral position. Significantly, too, while Mr Ellington was the police chief at the time, the man who will now succeed him, at least in the short term, Glenmore Hinds, was then in charge of operational matters in the constabulary and would be assumed to have had a more direct hand in the Tivoli Gardens operations. He would be expected to be called as a witness at the enquiry.

Further, Major General Stewart Saunders, who then commanded the Jamaica Defence Force, and is a prospective enquiry witness, is now the permanent secretary, and, therefore, the top civil servant in the security ministry, and, from that standpoint, a close professional collaborator of Minister Bunting. There are, therefore, reasonable questions about suitability for his current job and the posture that he and the minister should adopt now and during the enquiry.

The fundamental point is that the explanation doesn't seem to add up. After something far more coherent and cogent is placed on the table, it will be possible to more clearly assess Mr Ellington's legacy.

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