POLITICS-JAMAICA: Intrigues Bedevil Search for Accountability

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Zadie Neufville

KINGSTON, Nov 30 2001 (IPS) - Edward Seaga, leader of the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), pushed hard and loud for an official enquiry into July shoot-outs between police and gunmen that killed 27 people in one three-day period. Now that questions are being asked, he appears to be ducking them.

Seaga’s refusal to testify is causing many here to question the JLP leader’s motives in demanding a commission on enquiry into what police say was a gun search gone bad and what Seaga has maintained was a state attempt to intimidate his supporters.

From the outset, the opposition leader has made it clear he would not willingly participate because the commission was faulty in everything from its terms of reference to its composition.

In Seaga’s vision, the commission would probe the causes and chronology of the gun battle and the JLP leader would have a hand in picking commission members. In keeping with traditions that Seaga himself has used when in power, however, Prime Minister PJ Patterson has done the recruiting.

Adding to Seaga’s complaints, the body has been mandated to broaden its focus to include the influence of criminal gangs in the area of the shootings, the links between politics and the drug trade, and options to foster peace among communities and business leaders affected by the violence.

Speculation now is rife that Seaga intends the commission to fail and that his refusal to testify – and that of his party’s leadership – is designed to short-circuit the process.

Radio commentator Cliff Hughes says he believes Seaga had hoped that “his clamour for a hearing would have been denied”, giving him fodder for an election campaign he kicked off in January.

So when the JLP leader instructed members of his constituency not to give evidence at the hearing two weeks ago, then refused to testify under subpoena, Hughes says he saw a JLP “plot to undermine the commission.”

Veteran media commentator John Maxwell adds: “Mr. Seaga has a habit of withdrawing from any game, situation or imbroglio from which he is not clearly predestined to emerge triumphant and covered in perfume”.

Ahead in polls but facing up to a year’s wait for elections, Seaga wants to pressure the government into calling an early vote, a promise he made supporters at the start of his campaign. His efforts to stymie the commission follow a raft of unproven allegations of bias on the part of key government, law enforcement, and electoral officials – a familiar tactic for the JLP leader, according to attorney Paul Ashley.

Nevertheless, at least one local newspaper has rallied to Seaga’s defence by noting that lawyers representing the JLP leader and the party’s representative from the affected area walked out of the commission’s hearings after they were denied the right to cross examine witnesses. The commission said this was because the lawyers had not formally named their clients but, according to the newspaper, “the walkout was an entirely appropriate response by participants in an enquiry who felt that it was not being conducted properly, and who wished, legitimately, to undermine its credibility.”

Scorned, the commission itself has insufficient legal clout to compel Seaga’s testimony. It could charge him with contempt, for which a magistrate could jail him for three months or fine him ten dollars. Exercising such recourse, however, could confer upon Seaga the status of a martyr. Either way – by undermining the commission or by incurring its limited wrath – Seaga might be banking on a win.

Except that his absence from the proceedings cedes the arena to his opponent: the state.

The JLP has not been able to challenge or rebut damaging testimony by police officials and journalists, who say officers were first to be fired upon with weapons including a rocket launcher and that Seaga declined to walk through the troubled neighbourhood with the police chief and parliamentarians, a move designed to help defuse tension on the street.