Call for Samuda

WESTERN BUREAU:

Stakeholders in western Jamaica are clamouring for Senator Matthew Samuda to be promoted to the national security portfolio, replacing his boss, Dr Horace Chang, amid a soaring murder rate islandwide.

The call came after Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a Radio Jamaica interview that he would bring changes to his Cabinet in the new year.

But moving Chang, the deputy prime minister, may be a source of embarrassment for the Government because he is a political stalwart and general secretary of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

“He definitely has to be replaced from the national security post, but where to put him is another challenge,” said Lloyd B. Smith, a St James publisher and former parliamentarian.

Samuda, said Smith, is a good choice to succeed Chang.

The Holness administration has come under pressure for its management of violent crime and a number of scandals that has seen five ministers being reassigned or quitting over the last three years.

Commentators have called for a more commanding voice in education and a return of Fayval Williams to the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology.

“There seems to be a general consensus, outside the [JLP], that Transport and Mining Minister Robert Montague should go, and I think Mr Holness may heed public pressure and relieve him of his portfolio,” publisher and former parliamentarian, Lloyd B. Smith, said on Thursday.

“The problem with that is that Mr Montague is also the chairman of the party, and so I don’t see him being shuffled out of the Cabinet, especially against the background of a local government election on the horizon.”

In October, Montague was forced to dissolve the boards of Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ) and Norman Manley International Airport in the wake of a Gleaner revelation that the AAJ had made a $450-million stock purchase in the St Lucia-registered firm First Rock.

Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke later revealed in Parliament that the entities broke the law in their first of two investments because they did not get his ministry’s permission.

Montague has since announced the dissolution of the board of Clarendon Alumina Production, which has been removed from his oversight, amid growing controversy over a series of contracts given to CCA Capital Partners.

Smith believes that Juliet Holness, St Andrew East Rural member of parliament and wife of the prime minister, is the ideal choice to replace the party chairman.

“She is a powerful woman, she is someone who seems to get the job done. I don’t buy the argument that because she is the PM’s wife, she should not be given a ministerial portfolio,” he said.

Smith also wants the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information to be separated and for Robert Morgan, the state minister, to become a full minister in charge of youth and information, with Chang taking on education.

However, Bishop O’Neil Russell, pastor of Ark of the Covenant Holy Trinity Church in Westmoreland, does not agree with Chang being shifted to the Ministry of Education because he believes that that portfolio requires a higher level of enthusiasm.

“In Education, where Fayval Williams is, we need lot of energy. It needs a minister who is more vocal and decisive,” Russell told The Gleaner.

His preference is for Daryl Vaz to be shifted from the science, energy, and technology to education.

Russell, like Smith, is demanding that a new man take the helm of the national security portfolio.

“Young Matthew Samuda is doing a good job and I believe he is even more forceful than Chang. I believe that if he is appointed minister of national security, he will do a good job,” the pastor said.

Smith also believes that Homer Davis, a state minister and former mayor of Montego Bay, would be a top performer heading the agriculture ministry, as he does not see a return to the portfolio for Floyd Green.

Audley Shaw is the incumbent there.

Smith wants Holness to cement Samuda’s influence by finding a safe seat in the Lower House in which to parachute him, in the same way he brokered an agreement for the tapping of Dr Nigel Clarke for the St Andrew North West constituency.

Labour and Social Security Minister Karl Samuda should also go, said Smith, and be replaced by junior minister Zavia Mayne.

He also wants to see Fayval Williams reassigned to the industry and commerce ministry.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com