The prime minister was not ‘exonerated’
Published:Wednesday | February 22, 2023 | 12:42 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
The Advocates Network accepts that the Integrity Commission handled the matter of the investigation of the prime minister on corruption charges as required by law. As such, the organisation and its leaders were within their rights, even though the report had negative local and international effects, especially following the SSL exposé.
Both of these globally publicised issues do not augur well for Jamaica’s reputation.
For members of the public, including politicians, to say that the prime minister was “exonerated” does not reflect accurately what took place. The director of corruption prosecution ruled: “No charges would be preferred against the prime minister”.
This is not exoneration! Exoneration means “the action of officially absolving someone from blame”, which certainly was not the case in this instance.
The Advocates Network believes that the investigative report tabled in Parliament outlined actions accurately representing conflict of interest by the prime minister; however, as indicated by the director of corruption prosecution, no legal action was to be taken.
Parliamentarians in general, and the prime minister in particular, should not be intervening in the choices of service providers to be awarded contracts in any way. This should serve as a valuable lesson to all politicians in the future, if we are serious about curtailing corruption in Jamaica. MPs are not to be in the business of recommending contractors.
To quote from The Gleaner Editorial (17/2/2023), “Prime Minister Andrew Holness should be even more cognisant of why the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is bad policy and the inherent dangers it poses for conflicts of interest by politicians.”
The Advocates Network demands the abolition of the CDF.
Stop this circumvention of the established institutions that seek to promote good governance. This is one action to pivot us in the desired direction: to ensure that there is no need for the Integrity Commission to issue the details of an investigation of this sort in the future.
THE ADVOCATES NETWORK