The Knight-Golding showdown

Ian Boyne, Gleaner Writer

Last Thursday afternoon, I became exasperated while watching the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry. I had run out of superlatives to describe K.D. Knight's cross-examination of Prime Minister Bruce Golding and felt I would be unforgivably remiss and stingy to simply describe his performance as brilliant. Afterward, in struggling for words to capture what I had just witnessed, I had to settle for "intellectually orgasmic".

Perhaps it's the intellectual environment in Jamaica - or lack of it - which would cause me to deliver what my good friend and colleague Colin Steer would, no doubt, regard as an embarrassingly fawning opening paragraph. But when you are starved of good argumentation and a celebration of reason in the local environment, even the smell of it is delectable.

In K.D.'s own words, he was leading the prime minister "in a process of reasoning", a commitment he lived up to.

In a cross-examination which demonstrated a gripping mastery of research, information, recall, quickness of mind, intricacy of Government - as well as pacing, modulation, wit and charm - K.D. Knight ditched the aggressiveness and abrasiveness many had been complaining about and gave the prime minister maximum respect. When he said, "I have been a model" of respect, he was not exaggerating.

It was as if he wanted to show all Jamaica - and the world - that he could defeat the worthy opponent without any unfair or foul means. I hope he keeps up the respectfulness and restraint, for impoliteness and abrasiveness are redundant weapons in his arsenal. They are for lesser combatants.

I said to People's National Party Chairman Bobby Pickersgill and other high-ranking party officials on Thursday that if we could conduct our domestic political discourse at that level, what a difference that would make to our democracy. But I must stop dreaming and come back down to earth (Jamaica).

Clash of the Titans

It was up against the devastatingly expert bowling of K.D. that batsman Bruce Golding confirmed his artistry. Had he not been as intellectually sharp and quick on his feet, he would have been in serious trouble. He did look tenuous at times and on several occasions I heard A.J. Nicholson shout, "Caught!" But the public, not A.J., is the umpire.

My suspicion, however, is that the public might be just as inclined as A.J. to call the results of the game before it's over. I maintain that Golding deserves a fair, rational and impartial hearing, no matter how much abuse I will take for it. Why have so many called for an enquiry "in the search for truth," as K.D. has often put it, when they have predetermined what that truth is? Is it really a search for truth Jamaicans are on - or a search for a gas chamber to mete out punishment?

For many, it is as plain as day where the truth lies - and who is lying - therefore, for them 'enquiry' is a misnomer. A very costly one to taxpayers, too. Talk to people randomly and tell me how many have not already made up their minds. How many are genuinely, sincerely weighing the evidence, carefully assessing the arguments being put forward to determine truth?

Let's take this matter of the engagement of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips (MPP). I maintain, contrary to most of the country, that there is nothing necessarily improper about a political party engaging a firm to open doors for them in diplomatic circles. In testimony, Golding has withstood first-rate bowling by Knight on this issue. Knight delivered some of his finest balls on this pitch. But he failed to knock out Golding.

Golding had already explained on Wednesday that a person did not have to wait until he ran into a roadblock before he could see that one was there. He determined that there was a certain intransigence about the United States (US) officials - a stonewalling - which made it prudent for him to open doors in Washington. K.D. asked the best questions which could be asked on this, but Golding had testified on Wednesday that his own contacts with local diplomatic circles gave him the intelligence that he would not be getting anywhere with US officials here and, according to his testimony, because of who Coke was he wanted the matter to be dealt with expeditiously.

Now, you might question his motives, but there is no way of asserting definitively that he is lying. And as the great linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said in another context, "Whereof one cannot speak, therefore one should be silent."

One thing has been clear so far, and this even PNP tribalists must admit: Golding's emphatic denial in Parliament on March 16 that MPP had no contract with the Jamaican Government has not been disproven, and to date there is not one shred of evidence that he was lying. Even Harold Brady, who signed as an agent of Government, later publicly acknowledged he made "an error" and said he was not acting on behalf of the Government. No scandal has arisen to show that contrary to Golding's statement, there is evidence that the Government was really the client of Manatt. If K.D. can prove that, he will wear the crown.

Influence-peddling

It is clear from Golding's testimony that MPP was to open doors to get the US to be in a mood to listen to Jamaica and to tone down its arrogance and contemptuous disregard for the sovereignty of other nations - a reputation which it has honed. According to Golding's testimony, MPP was hired for "quiet diplomacy", the kind that takes place regularly in Washington. But I don't expect people with an aversion to reading to be acquainted with power politics in Washington, or the nuances of international diplomatic relations.

Influence-peddling, quite apart from legally defined 'lobbying', takes place all the time and by political parties which sometimes engage public-relations firms to do such work. Sometimes there is a thin line between public relations and lobbying.

There is one significant issue which has missed everyone in this Manatt-Dudus affair: The fact that the JLP had to engage a firm to help its Government to get a voice in Washington was a telling manifestation of the Caribbean's marginalisation in international politics. In this post-Cold War era, we don't matter anymore to Washington. In the years of 'Soviet expansionism' and 'the export of Cuban communism', Washington would be knocking down our doors. We could do deals on dons.

The US has shown again and again that it will turn a blind eye to all its principles and ideals once its strategic interests are being served. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, they turn the other way with drug lords because those countries are of primary strategic interest. At a time when the Caribbean's significance to the US is primarily in terms of its war on drugs and immigration, Golding had no clout to get Washington to be receptive. He had to literally buy it. Plus, his right-wing party had relations only with the Republican Party, which is out of power. So he was advised to go to a former chairman of the Democratic Party, Charles Manatt. That is not hard for me to understand.

The power of lobbying

In their book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, two leading foreign-policy scholars, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, tell of Israel's Likud party's attempts to peddle influence in Washington during the 1974 campaign to pass the Jackson-Vanik Amendment linking 'most-favoured trading nation' status to Moscow for permitting greater Jewish emigration. The authors refer to "The Likud party's successful effort to cultivate and strengthen hard-line support in key pro-Israel organisations during the years when Likud was sharing power with Israel's Labour party. Likud party officials (including Prime Minister Shamir's chief of staff, Yossi Ben-Aharon) worked to ensure that the Conference of Presidents was chaired by more conservative officials .,. ." The Likud half of the Government, not the Israeli government as a whole, engaged in influence-peddling and lobbying, broadly defined, to get desired results. That's the power of lobbying, and parties all over the world do it.

I am fully aware that Golding himself, under intense political pressure, has apologised to the nation for "sanctioning the initiative". He is a politician. I am not. My constituency consists of those - however few - who treasure the canons of reason.

It seems clear to me that the US violated its extradition treaty obligations to Jamaica, as it has done to even its peer competitors and to the international community. The anti-imperialist Michael Manley would have been proud of Golding for facing down the US on this issue of principle. The problem is, most people don't believe that the extradition delay had anything to do with principle. But forget about Golding's "true motives" now. Let us just admit that the evidence before us seems to be that the US was not as scrupulous as KD Knight in preparing the case.

Hindsight is 20/20

The issue that Golding has to answer, though, is whether there was other evidence in possession of the Government which would make Dudus extraditable. And if that can be established, why did the Government, having made its principled protest to the US, not hand over this most feared of dons? Golding said it was his "perceptiveness" which led him to see the roadblock of US stonewalling down the road. It is a pity his perceptiveness did not lead him to see that we have been so fed up with this politics-criminality link, and the historical sponsorship of dons and terrorists by politicians, that we would have been sick to the stomach at even a hint that he could be protecting Dudus.

Just as he had to relent and bow to public pressure in the end, perhaps that perceptiveness about the Jamaican people's disgust with dons and fear of American economic pressure would have given us different circumstances.

Our only consolation is that the destruction of the terrorist network in Tivoli Gardens - a centre for transnational crime and a feeder point for criminals in Jamaica - might not have happened otherwise. Happily in this post-Dudus era, we can enjoy a 42 per cent reduction in crime.

Ian Boyne is a media practitioner and chief state liaison. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.