PM: Liguanea reference not directed at United States Embassy
Published:Thursday | March 24, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Prime Minister Bruce Golding has sought to clear the air on the circumstances under which he uttered a slew of controversial comments during the Christopher 'Dudus' Coke extradition imbroglio between the United States and Jamaica.
Golding was emphatic during yesterday's sitting of the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry that his seemingly fiery claim that the minister of justice and attorney general, Dorothy Lightbourne, should resign if she signed the extradition request for Coke was taken out of context.
Declaring that his comment was not to be considered a threat, the prime minister said he was responding to Lightbourne's admission to him that if she had signed the request it would be in contravention of her constitutional obligation.
Responding to queries from his attorney, Hugh Small, Golding said Lightbourne had made the statement after raising several concerns about the extradition request.
The prime minister said it was in that context that he felt Lightbourne would have had to quit her job if she breached this constitutional responsibility to which she had spoken.
"It is my view that if the request was for someone other than Christopher Coke, the minister would have refused on these same grounds," Golding told the commission.
Statement clarification
The prime minister also sought to clarify a defiant statement he made in Parliament that "constitutional rights do not begin in Liguanea".
"There is a view that carries a great deal of sway in society that when dealing with alleged wrongdoers, issues of constitutional rights are flexible in relation to people who live downtown ... . I was saying that concern about constitutional rights must not be confined to uptown people," Golding said.
The prime minister suggested that Cross Roads was once seen as the demarcation line between uptown and downtown, but that has changed.
"I was using Liguanea as that demarcation line."
He denied that his comment was a caustic reference to the US Embassy.
"When I think of the embassy, I still think of Oxford Road," he said.