Editorial | The exuberant Mr Green

This newspaper doesn’t know whether Floyd Green’s conduct in the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) matter rises to the level of contempt of court.

A judge of the Supreme Court will decide that question if Larry Robertson’s complaint against Mr Green and a gaggle of officers and staff of the JAS goes ahead.

Nonetheless, on the basis of the prima facie evidence, The Gleaner is extremely uneasy with his behaviour in this matter, which seems to fly in the face of the separation of powers between the executive and judiciary, and appears to carry more than a whiff of arrogance.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, too, should be concerned.

Floyd Green is Jamaica’s agriculture minister. He is also an attorney-at-law, a qualification he achieved before becoming a politician.

Many people, however, will remember Mr Green in his previous stint as agriculture minister, when, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was filmed partying at a Kingston hotel, celebrating the birthday of a colleague. At the time, most Jamaicans were locked down in their homes, in accordance with government regulations.

The director of the public prosecutions (DPP) held that Mr Green couldn’t be charged because ministers of government were exempt from the “no-movement” restrictions. He, however, declared his penance and resigned for a period, before being returned to government by Prime Minister Holness.

That episode was perhaps a bout of youthful exuberance.

WAS THE MEETING LEGITIMATE

The issue in which Mr Green now finds himself embroiled has to do with the purported holding of the JAS’s annual general meeting on July 10, at which a new president, Winston Dobson, was supposedly elected.

The question now is whether that meeting was legitimately convened; if it breached a court injunction against it being held; and what hand, if any, Mr Green had in the exercise. It is common ground that Mr Green addressed the gathering.

The JAS, ostensibly, is an organisation of farmers, whose role is to promote and develop the agricultural sector. In reality, its independence is circumscribed by its structure, and more so, its poverty. It was incorporated by an act of Parliament. Its board must include members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as staff from the agriculture ministry.

Further, it survives only with big annual subventions from the government. For instance, in its 2018/19 financial year, the latest account posted on its website, the JAS reported revenue of J$117.75 million, of which J$103.4, or 88 per cent, was government support.

The government, to say the least, has a big say in the operations of the JAS. Yet, it is a perennially troubled organisation, with constant complaints from members about its management and purpose. Indeed, The Gleaner has several times over the past decade-and-half proposed that it be disbanded.

That, however, in the current scenario, is beside the point.

The JAS has been entangled with legal issues since late 2021 when one of its members, claiming irregularities in the process, went to court to reopen nominations for the association’s top positions ahead of a general conference. Then in 2022, the association’s president twice postponed the meeting to allow for the completion of the accounts for two of its branch societies. But questions about the efficacy of its accounts persisted.

A gathering of sorts was finally convened in July 2023. However, Mr Robertson, a member of the JAS board and president of the Portland branch society, gained a court injunction against implementing the outcomes of that presumed AGM.

Mr Robertson argued that before an annual general meeting could be held, the association, in accordance with the legislation and its bylaws, had to have audited accounts. Additionally, monies held for it by branch societies had to be paid over and accounted for in the financial report.

SUPREME COURT INJUNCTION

In May of this year, with the JAS having failed to meet deadlines to file affidavits in its defence, a Supreme Court judge extended Mr Robertson’s injunction until the substantive matter was heard. The first hearing is set for mid-September.

With rumblings that an AGM was nonetheless being planned, Mr Robertson’s lawyers, it was widely reported, wrote to the JAS’s leadership, as well as Minister Green, reminding them of the court injunction.

But according to reporting by The Gleaner, which hasn’t been disclaimed, on July 8 Minister Green wrote to two executive members of the JAS reminding of his previously declared position that the AGM should be held.

“That being the case, I urge you to desist in your efforts and/or attempts to obstruct the holding of the annual general meeting, which is legally due to be held in July, 2024,” Mr Green wrote.

Maybe Justice Tracy-Ann Johnson’s extension of Mr Robertson’s injunction was quietly discharged without anyone knowing. Or Minister Green might have found legal avenues around it that he hasn’t disclosed.

But even then, there would still be questions.

Despite certain powers exercised by the minister over the finances of the JAS, the law, according to this newspaper’s reading, doesn’t afford him authority over its day-to-day management, including how it responds to court challenges or the scheduling of AGMs. That’s the responsibility of the board.

We hope that this is not a case of overreach by Minister Green.