PM’s Comments Welcome, But He Should Still Remove Delroy Chuck…

It was refresh­ing to hear the Prime Minister talk about the ensu­ing cor­rup­tion imbroglio involv­ing Ruel Reid, Fritz Pinnock and oth­ers recent­ly.
Addressing a JLP Area Council One meet­ing at the Girl Guides Association of Jamaica head­quar­ters in St Andrew, the PM said he was sad­dened by the débâ­cle that has engulfed his admin­is­tra­tion.
“There is no ques­tion that it (Reid’s arrest) sad­dens me, that it sad­dens the entire par­ty, and I know you who sit here as well, you are indeed very sad­dened, very con­cern about what hap­pened.”

“I want to make it clear that … the Jamaica Labour Party that now has lead­er­ship and respon­si­bil­i­ty for the future of this coun­try, the insti­tu­tion of the par­ty, is strong­ly against any­thing that could be char­ac­ter­ized as cor­rup­tion, malfea­sance, and abuse of pub­lic funds,” Holness stat­ed, adding that con­cerns being raised are being tak­en seri­ous­ly by the par­ty.

“We will do every­thing in our pow­er to ensure that wher­ev­er there is cor­rup­tion, wher­ev­er there is the mis­use of pow­er, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic resources, that this admin­is­tra­tion will ensure that the mech­a­nisms are in place to fer­ret it out and bring them before the courts.” 
“This Government under­stands that, so when we sit togeth­er as a Cabinet, when we sit togeth­er as a par­ty, we have to look into our­selves, we have to reflect on what it is that we need to do, and the first thing is that the Government must nev­er inter­fere in the inde­pen­dent process­es to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion.”

More than any­thing else he said, the Prime Minister said the fol­low­ing; “You play a very impor­tant role in hold­ing Government to account. And what I know about the del­e­gates and work­ers of the Jamaica Labour Party is that dem love dem par­ty bad, but dem love dem coun­try more.” 

So he does get it. That was a charge to par­ty faith­ful as to where their loy­al­ties ought to be. Of course, many in atten­dance who were cheer­ing the Prime Minister com­plete­ly missed that charge, and one would guess it went over the heads of the major­i­ty of the hyper-par­ti­sans in the par­ty.
That is what this writer has been say­ing to laborites. Nations have polit­i­cal par­ties for nation­al devel­op­ment. Not the oth­er way around.
We make the grave mis­take in believ­ing that our loy­al­ties ought to be with the polit­i­cal par­ties of our choice. Our loy­al­ties should be to our nation.
No, I don’t care about the argu­ment that Comrades loy­al­ty is to their par­ty. We do not become our adver­saries, we set exam­ples for them to fol­low.
The People’s National Party has always had a cult-like per­sona. Members of the Jamaica Labor Party should not try to out-cult mem­bers of the PNP.

The over­ar­ch­ing point as far as I am con­cerned is that even though the Prime Minister said the Government must nev­er inter­fere in the inde­pen­dent process­es to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion.” It sends a chill down my spine, because that state­ment demon­strates that there is a lot more work to be done to build fire­walls around our crim­i­nal jus­tice process.
Even though I applaud the Prime Minister for open­ly mak­ing the state­ments he did, I wished he had gone far­ther by address­ing the state­ments made by Delroy Chuck his Justice Minister who can­not seem to keep his mouth shut.
There are many ways to inter­fere in the crim­i­nal jus­tice process. Chuck’s assault on law-enforce­ment was clear­ly a gra­tu­itous and cor­rupt attempt at influ­enc­ing a case which we are told is still under inves­ti­ga­tion.
That kind of inter­fer­ence is cor­rup­tion and it needs to be called out for what it is.
Since we can­not un-hear what we already heard, I am not inclined to be respon­sive to the idea that he with­drew the state­ment he made.
That a Minister of Government would inter­vene, (ver­bal­ly or oth­er­wise) in an active inves­ti­ga­tion, and a case that has not come to a res­o­lu­tion, which involves a for­mer col­league, is the very def­i­n­i­tion of corruption.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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