Golding and Trafigura

A.J. Nicholson, Contributor

From whatever angle it is viewed, fly high or fly low, the J$31-million gift from a Dutch company doing business in Jamaica, to the People's National Party (PNP) in 2006, was nothing more or nothing less than a campaign donation, ineptly handled. The conventional wisdom has always been that secret donations to political parties across the globe, including to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), are likely to be seen as having been accompanied by a tacit understanding, perhaps, that it is a back-scratching exercise.

The danger of that back-scratching element is what drives the evangelism of those who advocate that donations to political parties should be publicised. Of course, that is not the tradition in Jamaica and secret donations are certainly not illegal, unless the ingredients of bribery can be proved. From Alexander Bustamante in 1944 to Portia Simpson Miller in 2007, Bruce Golding has been the only leader of a political party who saw fit to make a political-campaign contribution publicly known.

Clearly, for this element of secrecy to be maintained, various mechanisms would have had to be employed and developed over the years. And, whatever those might be, inclusive of imaginary contracts, perhaps, it is also clear that in this instance, the mechanism that was sought to be used by the PNP was faulty.

The advocates of openness saw Golding's revelation as a good thing; it opened the door wider for them to thrust forward for the system to be exposed to the light of day.

They even applauded him, and saw the banking official who divulged the information as a nationalist 'whistle-blower'. This was at a time when Golding was seen as the engaging, almost pious, apostle of openness and transparency. Remember?

They must then have concluded that his objective was the transformation of the system from its back-scratching darkness of secrecy into the sunlight of scrutiny. For them, his objective could never have been to hound, and attempt to vilify, another political party for what his own party and a bundle of others worldwide would, unquestionably, have engaged in over the years, including in their 2007 election campaign exercise, and which will endure, unless their advocacy wins the day. How disappointed they must be!

The Goebbels of the JLP, Audley Shaw, understands that the Trafigura build-up by Golding undoubtedly helped to propel them into Jamaica House, and it is crystal clear that they are of the view that it can help them to remain there. It is yet to dawn on them that there is a mountain of negative signs that attach to their leader in the bluster contrived by him.

For, the revelation by the leader of the JLP of that campaign donation could very well prove to be a catalytic force for the system to be revolutionised; but it is also another solid sounding-board for the evaluation of his stewardship as leader of a political party in Jamaica. His refrain, along with his cheerleading section, has been that because of that donation, the PNP Opposition has no moral authority to question the type of governance that his administration has offered. Well, let's put that to the test.

Separate and apart from him being the first political party leader to 'colt the game' - and one cannot deliberately colt the game without having ulterior motives - an examination of Golding's conduct in the storm that he created, reveals a litany of unsavoury and sly manoeuvres which should not come to be detected in the behaviour of the leadership of a political party or government in any democratic society.

His very first statement to the House of Representatives on this matter was that the funds were monies due to the government of Jamaica, which they had diverted to political campaigning. That pronouncement sent shivers down the spine and immediately attracted the interest of all well-thinking persons in the society. In other words, this was not a mere campaign donation; it was a case of a government using monies owed to the people, for their own political campaign purposes.

Unsuspecting public

Of course, that was not true, but that was the first seed of inaccuracy that he planted in the minds of an unsuspecting public to win their attention and to get them, inadvertently, to buy into his machinations. In fact, that was how the contractor general was drawn to investigate the matter, for it is not part of the duties of that watchdog entity to inquire into donations made to political parties, without more.

Second, as leader of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, Golding was prepared to breach the hallowed principles of privacy that undergird the banker-customer relationship, not for the lofty aim that the campaign-financing system could be reformed, but for the purpose of casting his opponents in a bad light. That has not been the only occasion on which he has been prepared to flout the laws and provisions of our Constitution to satisfy his own scheming. The record speaks for itself.

Third, for him, the banking official who unlawfully released the information concerning a customer's account was a whistle-blower, willing to expose wrongdoing which could cause untold problems for Jamaica; such a person should be, and was, elevated to high office in government. And yet, according to him, Constable John Doe of the deadly extradition-treaty saga was to be regarded as a villain whose just desserts could only be imprisonment.

Good governance

A fourth component of the sounding-board defines Golding's concept of good governance. For him, in the case of that campaign donation, the roles of leadership in the political party and leadership in government are inextricably intertwined; in the messy extradition affair, those roles are poles apart. Colin Campbell, who straddled positions of leadership in party and government, must resign. In Golding's case, where his conduct caused the death of scores of Jamaicans; cost Jamaica billions of dollars; caused Jamaica's name to be mud within the community of nations; served up headlines concerning his resistance to the extradition of a reputed international drug and gun-runner, emblazoned across the front pages of newspapers right across the globe, he is to retain his positions, after a sham apology.

Fifth, the first parliamentary act of his attorney general in the new government, was to table a resolution in the Senate, to enable the Dutch authorities to conduct investigations here in Jamaica into the circumstances surrounding the campaign donation. And yet, it took an eternity, when he discovered that his spurious reasons for delay could no longer hold, for him finally to give instructions to the same minister to sign an authority to proceed upon a request for action by another foreign government, the United States, under the same mutual assistance regime by which he sought to invite the Dutch.

Now, in the sixth place, we are forced to ask from whence did 'Goebbels' Shaw receive the leaked information about a court order, so that he could shout the details from the pedestal of his party conference, even before any papers had been served? That question has been legitimately raised, since the two government officials who are directly involved are the minister of justice and the director of public prosecutions (DPP). The DPP has moved to clear the name of that office; if she is believed, that leaves the justice minister who was on the platform with Shaw last Sunday at the National Arena.

So, we have witnessed the corruption of the banking regime for partisan-political purposes. We have also witnessed the corrupt 'interpretation' of the law and the provisions of our Constitution for partisan-political ends, including the pursuit of vendettas. Jamaica needs to be assured that the offices of attorney general and minister of justice have not been further compromised, and that the integrity of the office of the DPP should not be called into question.

Independent observers would long have taken note of Golding's conduct in the campaign-donation storm that he contrived. They would have noted that his machinations have been no different than those he has employed in other areas of governance, only with far less damage done to the image of Jamaica and its people, but it all adds up. The genuine advocates of openness will not be daunted or delayed by his cunning tactics and stratagems. They know that the only way that this kind of weaponry can be removed from the arsenal of those who would wish to adopt the Golding approach, is for political donations to be made public.

In the end, the public knows for sure where 31 million Jamaican dollars of the campaign spending by the PNP in the election exercise of 2007 came from. The public remains in the dark about the amounts contributed, or the source of even one cent of the unprecedented campaign spending spree of the party that now forms the Government.

With the exposure of the Trafigura donation, as in so many other instances of his machinations, the public is now wise to Bruce Golding's regrettable habits. Sadly, there is more to come!

A.J. Nicholson is Opposition spokesman on justice. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.