PNP backs Phillips
Published:Monday | February 28, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
Former Cabinet members in the People's National Party administration, in which former Minister of National Security Dr Peter Phillips served, yesterday came out swinging against the Jamaica Labour Party Government in support of the treatment of two controversial memoranda of understanding (MOUs) signed under their watch.
Phillips signed the two MOUs with the United States and the United Kingdom in 2004.
Former Minister of Finance Dr Omar Davies was particularly strident during a Regional Executive Council (REC) meeting of the PNP Region Three, as he moved an amendment to a resolution calling for Jamaicans to support the steps taken by Phillips to stamp out all forms of criminal activities.
Davies contended that what he considered the blatant effort of the Bruce Golding administration to use the MOUs to divert from the "substantive issue" - the Government's handling of the extradition request for former Tivoli Gardens don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke - must be roundly condemned.
"The JLP has run out of cards to play, so they resorting to the MOUs as a diversion," Davies charged.
"As a colleague and close friend of Peter, I don't feel anyway that he signed the document without my knowledge," added Davies, who attended three of the five days during which Phillips was cross-examined at the ongoing Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry.
The former finance minister scoffed at the Government's claim that the principle of collective responsibility was breached by Phillips.
"This would mean that the entire Cabinet would have to be held responsible with Audley's chakka, chakka Budget," he quipped in a dig at his successor in the finance ministry, Audley Shaw.
Rights not trampled
Recalling that he was the technology minister under which cellular phones became popular in Jamaica, Phillip Paulwell, dismissed claims that the MOUs trampled on people's rights.
Paulwell said that as a member of the Cabinet committee, he was not opposed to Phillips signing the MOUs without his knowledge.
Anthony Hylton, a former foreign affairs minister, declared that as an attorney and former Cabinet member, he too supported Phillips' actions.
"In all these capacities, I am satisfied that Peter acted appropriately," Hylton declared.
"We can't allow this JLP administration, which has no record, no credibility and a lax approach to gunrunning and drug trafficking, to turn around in a warped way Phillips' efforts by making claims that he was indifferent to the rights of citizens," he stressed.
But it was opposition and member of parliament for Central Kingston, Ronald Thwaites, who whipped the supporters into a frenzy.
He characterised the use of the MOUs as a calculated distraction by the JLP.
"It is a day of shame when the prime minister and the minister of justice have to be subjected to cross-examination," declared Thwaites.
"It is time that the PNP stop sounding so defensive about the MOUs ... the commission is not about MOUs, it is about Dudus, so we must not fall for it," he declared to thunderous applause.