Present PNP Graft Scandal Highlights Blatant Abuse Of Power And Abject Indifference To The Rule Of Law.….

During the last nation­al elec­tion cycle the People’s National Party’s (PNP) lead­er­ship refused to engage in debates with the then Opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP).
In what has now been revealed to be a shock­ing case of irony, the log­ic for the PNP’s refusal, was that the then leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister Andrew Holness, had com­pared the then Prime Minister, now oppo­si­tion leader Portia Simpson Miller to a con artist.
I will get back to the irony later.

Manley’s Son Joseph :“Holness House Vulgar And Over-sized”: Confirms Envy.…

Within that irony was anoth­er irony, it was Simpson Miller who first labeled Holiness’s tax cut plan a con-job.
If Holness’s plan was a con-job, by infer­ence it could rea­son­ably be con­strued that the archi­tect Holness was being labeled a con-artist. Yet Miller refused to engage in debates with Holness, she fur­ther threat­ened legal action through one of the ambu­lance chasers who parade as con­sti­tu­tion­al experts.

It was on that flim­sy excuse that the then Prime Minister thumbed her nose at the nation’s 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple by refus­ing to tell them what plans she had for them going for­ward in tele­vised debates. Clearly Simpson Miller and her han­dlers mis­cal­cu­lat­ed in their belief that they would have been reward­ed with a new man­date after refus­ing to answer any pol­i­cy ques­tions dur­ing their term in office.

Holness’s House A Product Of Envy Manley Sowed.….

More shock­ing than the refusal to debate, was the par­ty’s curi­ous fix­a­tion with a house under con­struc­tion which is the prop­er­ty of the then oppo­si­tion leader Andrew Holness.
In order to have the issue of his finances out of the way so he could con­cen­trate on the task of win­ning the elec­tion, Holness was forced to reveal the sources of fund­ing for the pala­tial man­sion he had under construction.

Even after reveal­ing his fund­ing sources, the PNP kept up the attack on Holness, in a way which could only be defined in plain Jamaican col­lo­qui­al ver­nac­u­lar as “bad mind and grudge­ful” . The gen­er­al infer­ence from the line of attack was that there was some­thing unto­ward, some­thing nefar­i­ous , some­thing uneth­i­cal, some­thing crim­i­nal even, about the Holness’s abil­i­ty to afford a home of that size.

THE IRONY

It has now become crys­tal clear that the fix­a­tion with Holness’s house, was to cov­er up the mas­sive cor­rup­tion and graft which was hap­pen­ing in their own party.
It was a ruse designed to deflect atten­tion from where the nation’s atten­tion ought to have been focused.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the cor­rup­tion which has defined the PNP and yes the JLP .
However as I have said con­sis­tent­ly, the lev­el of cor­rup­tion with­in the PNP has demon­stra­bly been con­sis­tent with sub-Saharan African and tin-pin South American klep­to­ma­ni­ac regimes .

This may be defined by the many scan­dals under it’s lead­er­ship, scan­dals high­light­ed by the con­trac­tor gen­er­al’s depart­ment. The TRAFIGURA scan­dal. Cuban light bulb scan­dal. Iran sug­ar deal. OUTAMENI. Refusal to decon­struct gar­risons. Using tax-pay­ers mon­ey as their own. and the shame­ful and dis­gust­ing abus­es of pow­er which are not seen in any oth­er nation in the hemi­sphere. This has had con­se­quen­tial neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for Jamaicans in the way they are treat­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly in the CARICOM region.
http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​8​3​1​/​c​h​i​n​e​s​e​-​e​m​b​a​s​s​y​-​s​h​o​c​k​e​d​-​a​l​l​e​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​c​o​n​t​r​a​c​t​o​r​s​-​p​a​i​d​-​p​n​p​-​b​r​i​bes

It is no sur­prise then that this scan­dal of pay-for-play involv­ing Chinese Contractors oper­at­ing on the Island has now come to the fore.
What per­son who knows about Jamaica is sur­prised by this?
The fact that the Chinese are alleged to have been forced to pay extor­tion mon­ey is not only shock­ing , it is criminal.
This is TRAFIGURA 2.0 on steroids.
It is impor­tant that even though the Dutch Company TRAFIGURA could not give mon­ey to a polit­i­cal par­ty of a for­eign coun­try accord­ing to Dutch laws , it was done any­way and the PNP took that money.

Yes that mon­ey was returned, but only after the Dutch Government launched it’s own probe to deter­mine whether TRAFIGURA had bro­ken Dutch laws. To date no pub­lic offi­cial with­in the PNP has been held account­able for those crimes.
To date there has been no expose’ , no clar­i­ty, no res­o­lu­tion in a case which was clear­ly a crim­i­nal accep­tance of mon­ey by the PNP from a for­eign enti­ty with which it was doing state business.
There was no ambi­gu­i­ty, it was graft. It was cor­rup­tion. It was crim­i­nal. Yet like all of the oth­er atro­cious crimes com­mit­ted by PNP func­tionar­ies ‚no one has been held account­able , no one has paid for those crimes.

It is instruc­tive that the leader of the oppo­si­tion feign igno­rance of the specifics of the trans­ac­tions even as her par­ty is engulfed in the tsuna­mi of charge and counter charge of graft-tak­ing not from out­side but from fac­tions with her own party.
She may be igno­rant in gen­er­al but not about this issue.
If ever there was a need for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor , this is it. We will not see a spe­cial­ly impan­eled enti­ty with pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers how­ev­er, there is no mileage to be extract­ed by Miller as she thought was avail­able from the fraud­u­lent Tivoli inquiry.

In the same breath that Miller feigns igno­rance of the graft alle­ga­tions she is high­ly crit­i­cal of par­ty mem­bers who have leaked the scan­dal to the public.
It is absolute­ly shock­ing yet total­ly under­stand­able that this woman, who has built her­self a career as defend­er of the poor, the same woman who pre­sent­ed a fraud­u­lent finan­cial dis­clo­sure to the coun­try, would want to cov­er up this scandal.

Where is Portia Simpson-Miller’s sense of Nationalism, where is her sense of lead­er­ship, where is her sense of duty to our coun­try over her loy­al­ty to party?
Whether or not mon­ey was paid to spe­cif­ic high­ly placed PNP Ministers of the then Government and was not hand­ed over to the par­ty is hard­ly the issue here.
Even if the mon­ey was intend­ed for the par­ty , there is some­thing rad­i­cal­ly wrong with a for­eign enti­ty giv­ing mon­ey to any polit­i­cal par­ty or the other.
In fact Chinese Authorities have stri­dent­ly main­tained that Chinese laws are suf­fi­cient­ly clear . That they express­ly pro­hib­it Chinese com­pa­nies from donat­ing to any for­eign polit­i­cal parties.
Cash alters elec­tions , large infu­sions of cash alters elec­tions in fun­da­men­tal ways. . If the cash was giv­en as bribes, then it is far worse far more com­plex. On the face of it it is crim­i­nal for Government offi­cials to accept bribes ‚peri­od. To accept bribes from for­eign agents is far more consequential.

It is impor­tant now, that the present Government take the nec­es­sary steps to con­vene an appro­pri­ate inves­ti­ga­tion into what tran­spired, . It can­not be left up to the inept police and the show-boat­ing Director of Public Prosecution.
It can­not be left up to Simpson Miller’s so-called integri­ty com­mis­sion to fig­ure this one out.
It can­not be left up to a spe­cial fox to make sure that the oth­er fox­es do not eat the chick­en. It can­not be that these pub­lic ser­vants break the laws with such dar­ing and brazen dis­re­gard and not be held accountable.
The present Government can no more talk about cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal col­lu­sion in pol­i­tics if it fail to act , it is no longer in oppo­si­tion , it has the pow­er to act and it must act.