Editorial | Reforming Parliament

This newspaper has long been on record in support of mechanisms for the impeachment and/or recall of Jamaica’s legislators who, while in office, engage in wantonly egregious behaviour.

Indeed, it remains our position, as articulated last month, that the Constitution Reform Committee (CRC) took the lazy way out and demonstrated a lack of creativity in deciding against recommending an impeachment clause in the basic law on the grounds that many of the offences for which members of parliament (MPs) were likely to be impeached would probably be criminal in nature and, therefore, better adjudicated in courts of law.

To that we adopted, and continue to embrace, the report of the former prime minister, Bruce Golding: “... If a potential conflict exists between impeachment and criminal proceedings, let’s remove triable offences from the definition of impeachable causes rather than shredding the whole idea altogether.”

This is part of the backdrop against which The Gleaner supports the declared intention of Opposition Leader Mark Golding to pursue his long-standing impeachment bill when Parliament reconvenes later this month from its summer recess.

The opposition leader’s bill was tabled more than three years ago, in April 2021, at the height of intense public discussion on gender-based violence and questions about the identity of a male captured in a viral video beating a woman with a stool.

George Wright, then an MP for the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), neither confirmed nor denied that he was the person in the video. However, Mr Wright engaged in discussions with his party and was encouraged to apply for, and received, a leave of absence from the House. Subsequently, he ostensibly resigned from the JLP to sit as an independent but continues to support his supposedly former party in, and outside of, Parliament.

While Mark Golding’s bill was more expansive than its previous iteration, conceptually, it was not entirely new.

Bruce Golding had tabled one in 2011, months before his government and premiership imploded under the weight of the Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke scandal over the administration’s efforts to thwart Coke’s extradition to the United States to face gun and drug-trafficking charges.

Bruce Golding’s bill was not taken up by the People’s National Party’s (PNP) 2012-2016 administration, in which Mark Golding was the justice minister. It fell off Parliament’s Order Paper.

RAISES QUESTIONS

That the opposition leader’s bill has languished in legislative purgatory nonetheless raises questions beyond the philosophical considerations people may have with respect to the impeachment of elected officials.

There are, for instance, the fundamental matters about the workings of democracy and how the rights of the minority and those who occupy the back benches find expression in Parliament. The issue also highlights the dominance of members of the executive over the rest of Parliament as well as offers a compelling case for a rebalancing through amendments to the Standing Orders, the rules that govern the operation of the legislature.

Jamaica’s Constitution (Section 55) gives every member of parliament the right to introduce bills and propose motions for debate, but this right is exercisable “according to the Standing Orders of that House”.

The Standing Orders establish procedures for how these bills and/or motions are to be tabled and the timeframe within which they should be debated after publication on the Order Paper – the details of Parliament’s proposed business for a day.

However, getting private members’ bills and motions, that is, those that are not in the names of ministers or members acting on behalf of ministers, is somewhat of a Sisyphean task, or worse. At least Sisyphus consistently gets the rock to the top of the hill before it rolls down again.

Like in most democracies, parliamentary time is controlled by the Government, and Order Papers, especially where discretionary powers over debate exist, are the remit of the Speaker, usually acting in concert with the leader of government business of the House.

In Jamaica, there is no specifically allotted time for dealing with matters that are the priority of the Opposition.

NOT NEW

This is not new. It has existed throughout the life of the Parliament of independent Jamaica. Governments, across parties, have used the rules to thwart scrutiny, even from their own side, of issues that might have the merest tinge of embarrassment.

In recent years, the persistence of opposition member Fitz Jackson led to a debate on his bill on service standards for banks, which the Government defeated. And Juliet Cuthbert Flynn got her motion calling for a review of the rape law considered and sent to a special select committee.

But far more typical is the experience of Ronald Thwaites, who complains of eventually leaving Parliament with several bills and motions in his name ignored.

Better is possible, and desirable, in a democracy. For example, Standing Order 14 for the UK parliament says: “Twenty days shall be allotted in each session for proceedings on opposition business, seventeen of which shall be at the disposal of the Leader of the Opposition and three of which shall be at the disposal of the leader of the second largest opposition party; and matters selected on those days shall have precedence over government business … .”

Similarly, in Canada, 22 days in each parliamentary session are allocated to opposition parties, with the main opposition getting the most, to raise for debate. Additionally, on sitting days, time is set aside for private members’ issues.

These models are worthy of emulation in Jamaica.