Major shake-up looming in JLP’s Cabinet and executive
Published:Sunday | April 30, 2023 | 1:53 AM
Junior foreign minister Leslie Campbell has reportedly rebuffed two offers to take up diplomatic posts overseas in exchange for his senate seat, according to high-placed sources in the Holness administration which appears on the cusp of a major shake-up.
The overture is among broader executive and cabinet changes being contemplated by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who is seeking to energise his administration at mid-term that has been jolted by unfavourable polls, and firmly begin the march towards the next general election.
Telephone calls and messages yesterday to Campbell and his senior minister and fellow senator Kamina Johnson Smith were not answered.
Campbell was reportedly offered the high commissioner post in the United Kingdom, which he rejected. He also turned down an offer to go to Germany.
The Germany post is vacant while Patricia Laird Grant has been acting as high commissioner in London since Seth George Ramocan’s five-year tour of duty ended in August 2022. It has surprised some in Jamaica’s foreign service that the London post, a major diplomatic and traditionally political post, has remained without a permanent appointment for almost 10 months.
For whom Campbell’s senate space is needed is not clear, but it appears Holness wants some change to the 13-member slate of government senators in Parliament’s upper chamber. He has no power to remove, a position affirmed in the undated senate resignation letters scandal of a decade ago.
Reports have emerged that Dr Saphire Longmore has been offered a posting in Belgium, one of the more technical diplomatic assignments, given its coverage of the European Union and other trade and economic responsibilities.
Longmore, a consultant psychiatrist, said she cannot comment on the reports, because doing so “would be pre-empting anything that is being said in another space that is probably more in the capacity to comment on that”.
“As was before, as is now and as will be, I am committed to the service of Jamaica and, however I can play that role I will do so,” she told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday, adding that “anything is possible”.
The top post in Brussels is currently held by Symone Betton-Nayo, a career diplomat.
Deputy Prime Minister Dr Horace Chang refused to be drawn on the new assignments, including the potential changes at the executive and cabinet levels.
He said many of the reports are “speculations running around the place” and while there’s “nothing” to suggest he’s among those to be changed, “it’s always an option for the prime minister”.
Though acknowledging media reports of Audrey Sewell being tipped to become cabinet secretary, Chang said he could only confirm that senior member of the Jamaican foreign service, Ambassador Alison Stone Roofe, will start duties Monday as permanent secretary in his Ministry of National Security.
Stone Roofe will replace Courtney Williams, who was appointed in March as Jamaica’s first fiscal commissioner.
FIRST FEMALE TO HEAD JAMAICA’S PUBLIC SERVICE
Sewell, a widely respected and senior public servant and seen by many as the natural successor to Ambassador Douglas Saunders, would become the first female to head Jamaica’s public service. She would also be the most senior policy adviser in the civil service. She’s currently the permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and the Holness-led Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation.
Shock came with last year’s botched attempt to install former army chief Lieutenant Rocky Meade to the cabinet secretary post. He declined the offer in September after concerns were raised about the constitutionality of his appointment.
Saunders, who was due to retire at the end of September, has been maintained on a series of contract extensions since.
Among the Cabinet moves reportedly being considered is deploying Floyd Green, who is currently a full minister in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), to the transport and mining ministry and transferring the incumbent to the OPM.
Changes at the Pearnel Charles Jr-led Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Karl Samuda-headed Ministry of Labour and Social Security are also being considered. Holness has reportedly not been impressed with the work of those ministries.
Despite positive macro-economic indicators such as low employment numbers and growth returning to pre-COVID-19 levels, the Holness-administration has been struggling to ensure Jamaicans feel the positive impacts in their pockets and households.
The announcement of a 44 per cent increase in minimum wage, the largest in decades, was seen as a key response to low-income earners.
‘A LITTLE HEAT NOW’
The urgency has also been helped by a recent public opinion poll which shows the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Mark Golding-led Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) in a statistical dead heat, though the PNP leads by less than half a percentage point.
Some 28.1 per cent of respondents picked the PNP, compared to 27.9 per cent who sided with the JLP when asked which of the two main political parties they would be inclined to vote for, according to the poll conducted between February 17 and 26 this year by the Don Anderson-led Market Research Services Limited.
It was commissioned by the PNP.
Back in September 2022, an RJRGLEANER-commissioned Don Anderson poll revealed that 31 per cent of electors would mark their ballot for the JLP, while 18 per cent said they would vote for the PNP.
Chang said unpopular reactions to government policies have to be contexualised with a recognition of the negative impacts of COVID.
He said the socio-economic challenges that existed before March 2020 when Jamaica recorded its first case were “compounded” by the pandemic.
“We recognise it and we have to take steps to try and recover or to restore confidence in the things we are doing,” Chang said yesterday.
Recrafting the executive and Cabinet, which may include retiring some long-time faces of the JLP and rewarding others, is also being seen as a sensitive dance for Holness, who reportedly does not want to be viewed as discarding stalwarts and upsetting a tenuous party unity.
“The leader (Holness) has to be careful but he has to do what he has to do,” said a senior JLP official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“There’s a little heat now and we have to show the people that we care and that we remain their best hope for progress and real transformation. People are getting roads, houses and water. We just need to continue to deliver,” he said.
Holness is expected to address today’s meeting of the JLP’s Central Executive, the party’s second-highest decision-making body, in St James.