Curtis breaks silence

Former Clerk to the Houses of Parliament Valrie Curtis has said she will accept nothing less than a public withdrawal by House Speaker Juliet Holness of a March 22 letter of reprimand sent to her and copied to 62 lawmakers in the Lower House.

On March 26 – the day Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke closed the Budget Debate in Parliament – the former clerk said she was invited to a meeting with the Speaker.

“When I entered her office, she looked at me and said, ‘Ms Curtis, how you feel’? I said, ‘Madam Speaker, how do you expect me to feel? If it were you, how would you feel?’”

The former House clerk recounted that she and her son were travelling home on the Mandela Highway on March 25, while she was on departmental leave, when they heard the contents of the letter being discussed on Radio Jamaica 94FM’s ‘Beyond The Headlines’.

Continuing, she said: “Imagine! I was driving home with my son. My son was at the wheel and I heard it on Dionne Jackson Miller’s programme.”

She said when the allegations were being made against her, her son was visibly shaken.

“Everybody knows the relationship I have with my son. If I am hurt, he’s hurt; and worse, if he is hurt, I am hurt. And so he was wondering, ‘Mom, what you did?’, because he didn’t know any background, so just hearing this, can you imagine the shock?”

While keeping her eyes fixed on her son, Curtis said her phone started to ring as several persons tried to reach her to console her and offer words of comfort.

“That night, and a few nights after, I saw my son coming to my room to check, ‘Mom, are you alright?’ Sometimes he peeks in to see if I am sleeping; it affected him badly,” she said.

She said it was the following day when she turned up at work that she saw the letter marked ‘Confidential’ on her desk but with its contents already in the public domain.

Sharing that she is a Christian believer, the former clerk said that one of her pastors ... called while she was on the highway that afternoon and prayed with her.

Her church brethren rallied around her when she attended services on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, with another round of prayers offered up on her behalf.

The now-retired Curtis said she also received calls from around the world, including words of encouragement from her Commonwealth counterparts and friends from other jurisdictions.

At the March 26 meeting with the Speaker, Curtis said she informed Holness that she was told by the human resources (HR) director that the “letter was returned”. However, she said the Speaker did not respond to her comment.

“In the event that it is withdrawn, based on what the HR director has said, I don’t want no secret withdrawal. I want Jamaica and the whole world to know just like how the letter went out there,” she said in an exclusive interview with The Gleaner.

“She called me to a meeting about minutes to 2. I told her in that meeting that I want the letter withdrawn,” she insisted.

On March 26, the Speaker entered the chambers of the House more than 30 minutes late, apparently because of the meeting with Curtis. Phillip Paulwell, leader of opposition business in the House, asked the Speaker whether she would withdraw the controversial missive.

She told Paulwell she was having dialogue with the then clerk to the Houses.

“On the matter of the clerk, I advise you, both from myself and the clerk, that we are in dialogue and wish to say nothing else at this point,” she said.

An attempt to reach Speaker Holness for comment yesterday was unsuccessful as she did not respond to a message that was left with her assistant.

In a telephone conversation, Curtis said she asked the HR director what would be the protocol for withdrawing the letter, seeing that she had informed her that anything placed on a person’s file could not be withdrawn.

The Speaker had instructed in her letter that the document be placed on Curtis’ file.

Curtis told the Speaker that if the letter has been withdrawn, she has the responsibility to make a public disclosure about the retraction.

“I still have the letter sent to me by the Speaker, as it has not been retrieved from me,” she told The Gleaner.

Meanwhile, the former clerk upbraided Information Minister Robert Morgan for remarks he made at a post-Cabinet press briefing last week.

“The other thing that hurts me more than anything else was when the minister of information, Robert Morgan, said ... that the country has better things to think about than a letter of reprimand,” she said.

“I really felt crushed by that because that was quite irresponsible, inconsiderate and arrogant,” she said.

Morgan described as “immaterial” public debate over whether the Speaker should withdraw the letter of reprimand she wrote to the former clerk.

“When I go to North Central Clarendon (Morgan’s constituency), nobody’s asking me about a letter to the [clerk], they’re asking when we gonna get more water … roads? Will we get more vehicles for the police station? And I think we do a disservice to the people of Jamaica to allow others to distract us from holding the Government accountable to the things that are so important to the daily lives of the people of Jamaica,” he said.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com