PNP’s Hypocrisy On Corruption Puke Inducing…

Speaking to the arrests of for­mer Education Minister, Ruel Reid, Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) President, Fritz Pinnock, and a JLP Parish Councillor in St. Ann, in what appeared to be coör­di­nat­ed law-enforce­ment raids, the leader of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion made the fol­low­ing state­ments.
In a release from Peter Phillips, the PNP said it regards the arrest of for­mer Education Minister Ruel Reid and CMU President Fritz Pinnock as a begin­ning, but an impor­tant step in Jamaica’s efforts to clean up cor­rup­tion and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of good gov­er­nance and pro­bity in pub­lic affairs.
The release said that it was too ear­ly to make a detailed state­ment but it is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and await­ing fur­ther announce­ments from the Financial Investigations Divisions and the Major Organised Crime Agency.
“The par­ty will make a ful­some state­ment on the devel­op­ment when war­rant­ed,” said the PNP as it argued that oth­er inves­tiga­tive reports on Petrojam and NESoL “were long over­due”.
“The PNP feels it is impor­tant that the sit­u­a­tion, which per­sist­ed in some of these agen­cies and orga­ni­za­tions for well over a year, be brought to an end and the Jamaican peo­ple be pro­vid­ed with the rel­e­vant information.”

The state­ment from the Opposition leader and the oppo­si­tion PNP sounds rather rea­son­able to an onlook­er who has no his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge of Jamaican pol­i­tics.
To informed bystanders and oth­er stake­hold­ers how­ev­er, this state­ment by the oppo­si­tion leader and the PNP in gen­er­al, stinks of rank hypocrisy.
Peter Phillips, KD Knight, Omar Davies, AJ Nicholson, and oth­ers have active­ly been in pol­i­tics as long as I have been alive, maybe longer.
In the time ensu­ing, both in Government and in oppo­si­tion, Peter Phillips and the PNP have had ample time to cham­pi­on the cause of hon­esty, decen­cy, deco­rum, and the removal of cor­rup­tion from the Jamaican polit­i­cal system.

Never once has Phillips or his par­ty seen fit to address the scan­dals, gross theft, and the egre­gious cor­rupt prac­tices that the PNP has engaged in, which has become one of the things for which the PNP is known.
In fact, on one occa­sion when jour­nal­ists con­front­ed the last PNP Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, about one of the scan­dals, (the Trafigura scan­dal to be exact), she scam­pered away while telling jour­nal­ists dis­mis­sive­ly, to go ask the PNP. (Yes the same PNP of which she was the head).
It is with that dis­dain and con­tempt that the PNP holds the gen­er­al pub­lic, a pub­lic it pan­ders and lies to, when it’s des­per­ate for polit­i­cal pow­er.
Neither the PNP nor its prin­ci­pal offi­cers feel that they owe the Jamaican peo­ple an expla­na­tion for the bil­lions of dol­lars they siphon off, with which they pad their own pock­ets.
From as far back as the Iran sug­ar deal and even much far­ther back, “Shell Waiver Scandal” , Trafigura, and Outameani. Scandals in which PNP mem­bers col­lect­ed monies to the tune of tens of mil­lions of US$ and fail to turn the monies over to the par­ty, the Cuban light bulb scan­dal and the end­less list of graft, theft, and cor­rup­tion for which the par­ty has become infa­mous,. Forgive me a moment if this self-right­eous state­ment from the PNP makes me want to puke.

My research was min­i­mal, but some friends found this.

Unfortunately for the rul­ing JLP, all have been mem­bers of that par­ty.
Neville Cleveland Lewis and J A G Smith, both went to prison.
The PNP should take no com­fort from this, nei­ther should it har­vest any glee from it. The PNP may seek to mar­ket this as some kind of indi­ca­tion of its hon­esty, rather it should be seen that the JLP has been far less tol­er­ant of cor­rup­tion with­in its ranks, even though cor­rup­tion may be found in both polit­i­cal parties.

The fact of the mat­ter is that there have been expo­nen­tial­ly more scan­dals attrib­uted to the PNP than has been attrib­uted to the JLP.
The PNP has been far more aggres­sive with its pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns because of its entrenched sur­ro­gates with­in the local media enti­ties.
Insofar as the ele­vat­ed lev­els of cor­rup­tion with­in PNP admin­is­tra­tions have been over the JLP are con­cerned, that may be attrib­uted to the sim­ple fact that the PNP has held pow­er for longer peri­ods of time.

The mes­sage com­ing out of Peter Phillips s mouth, is exact­ly what our coun­try needs, rig­or­ous over­sight, but beyond that, strength­en­ing and restruc­tur­ing the guard rail around pub­lic resources is crit­i­cal.
Kleptomaniacs with­in both polit­i­cal par­ties should look at pub­lic ser­vice as an hon­or and a patri­ot­ic duty, not an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get rich overnight.
When we get to a place where there are suf­fi­cient guard rails in place on the one hand, and aggres­sive crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions on the oth­er, the thieves will seek employ­ment else­where.
Then maybe we may have in Gordon house peo­ple of char­ac­ter who will leg­is­late rather than bang on desks and shout moron­ic com­ments at each oth­er.
In the mean­time, nei­ther the PNP nor Peter Phillips has the moral char­ac­ter or cred­i­bil­i­ty to speak to cor­rup­tion in Jamaica.

This arti­cle has been updat­ed since it was first published.

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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