A crisis of leadership - Providing excuses instead of solving problems

Gary Spaulding, Guest Columnist

Over the last couple of weeks, an odd mixture of revulsion, and bewilderment has absorbed a great number of Jamaicans.  The citizenry seems repulsed by bombshells that blasted the political domain and are facinated by the range of spin brazenly placed on the questionable activities of politicians at the highest levels.

Indeed, the gamut of political machinations that have been activated by members of both major political parties has been quite dizzying - a troubling signal that Jamaica is in the throes of a leadership crisis.

For as the scandals, controversies and suspected illegalities emerge with disquieting frequency, instead of taking the honourable route and accepting blame or taking action against the disreputable conduct of their members, the messengers of news/reports have invariably come under attack.

After days of WikiLeaks revelations, involving alleged misdeeds of Prime Minister Bruce Golding and past and present ministers, news broke at the start of week that the contractor general had recommended that at least councillors be investigated for multimillion-dollar corruption.

Left untreated for many years, the corruption virus has triggered a ballooning crisis of leadership in the country, but many in high places have not risen to the occasion.

There are unmistakable signs that the germ of corruption was allowed to fester over the years even as lip service was administered whenever political expedience demanded.

A few years ago, there was a group of clever racketeers in Jamaica who had become so adept at beating the system and cheating the Government of the day of much-needed revenues that, over time, the art of swindling became a sport to them.

Even when it was easier to go through the correct channel, these con artists would devise schemes to circumvent the system.

The act of corruption was as entertaining to them as a football enthusiast scaling the high stadium wall to get into the facility when the event is free and the gates are all open.

Walking free

Over time, the crisis gripping the system seems to have pervaded the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) alike, with both organisations becoming adroit at proffering myriad excuses instead of addressing the problem.

Kern Spencer was never pressured by his party to resign as a representative of the people, even after he was charged criminally for his alleged action as a junior minister in the PNP administration.

As public pressure mounted, Spencer finally stepped aside as a candidate of the party in the next general election, but his influence continues to be felt in North East St Elizabeth.

Tragically, there was no one in leadership with the moral authority to tell him to quit his parliamentary seat.

The JLP's condemnation was deafening - the PNP was silent.

Similarly, Joseph Hibbert resigned as a junior minister in the Golding administration, after being accused of accepting bribes from a British bridge-building firm, but he comfortably remains an MP.

Dual citizenship

The four MPs - Daryl Vaz, Michael Stern, Gregory Mair and Shahine Robinson - aligned to the JLP who were chucked out of Gordon House because they were found to be in breach of the Constitution and, therefore, not eligible to sit in the parliamentary chamber, would not budge until the court gave them the boot.

There was no one in leadership to tell them that the act they had perpetrated was illegal - a symbol of the deeper crisis gripping leadership at the political level.

Perhaps one of the classic displays of leadership in crisis was Prime Minister Bruce Golding's admission that he knew all along that the members were in breach of the constitutional provisions, but he considered his party's dominance of Parliament as more important than the law.

Talk about political expediency. It was the PNP which had initiated the court action against the JLP four.

Now the public is aware that the party has at least two likely dual-citizenship holders in Ian Hayles and Sharon Hay-Webster.

The din of the PNP leadership has been muted and its members shamelessly sit inside the hallowed House of Representatives, with a multitude of excuses to justify their positions.

Hay-Webster's reaction was classic after the blinding glare of WikiLeaks on her.

Her 2009 plan to go to the United States Embassy to renounce her US citizenship was noised abroad - The Gleaner had seen to it.

So was Hay-Webster's about-face four days later - WikiLeaks had seen to that.

Hay-Webster is a vocal member of the parliament for the tough South Central St Catherine seat.

It was Hay-Webster who was selected as the party's candidate for the seat when Heather Robinson repudiated political hoodlums who had threatened to rape and murder her.

Robinson, who reported her ordeal to Parliament, resigned in June 1996.

In Parliament, Hay-Webster has stood up to the toughest and has moved censure motions against some prominent people in the then Opposition (they were never debated on).

Noticeable change

It was, therefore, odd that the very vocal Hay-Webster had remained mum on her role as a suspected dual citizen.

When Hay-Webster put pen to paper, in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks revelations, she charged that The Gleaner was motivated by the fact that the dual-citizenship holders associated with the JLP had been booted by the court.

It is a matter of record that Gleaner editorials have taken on the holders of dual citizenship - even though this newspaper questions the rationale for the eligibility of non-Jamaican Commonwealth citizens in the House - and had welcomed the decision of the court to expel them from Parliament.

Hay-Webster's argument would have been ludicrous if it were not so distressing, coming from a third-term MP who has represented Jamaica on committees overseas.

The rhetoric of politicians in explaining away their actions has highlighted the expediency they adopt whenever they are caught in or after the act.

PM's rage

Prime Minister Golding sometimes fails to keep a rein on his tongue.

Days after his loyal spokesman, Daryl Vaz, stressed that he would not respond to the WikiLeaks report, Golding accused "power brokers" at The Gleaner of conspiring with WikiLeaks to oust him and others in both political parties.

A US diplomatic cable suggested that Golding's rush to expose the then Simpson Miller administration in the Trafigura affair was lightning even to some members of his party.

For according to Golding, then opposition leader, corruption was afoot and should be exposed and rooted out.

However, Golding, now prime minister, is advocating restraint.

Golding, the opposition leader, vowed to find a way to expose the corrupt PNP - it did not matter that the documents were, perhaps, leaked.

It did not matter to Golding that these banks might pay dearly for the breach of the Banking Act, once the PNP administration was exposed.

It did not matter to Golding that the legislation which was being flouted was a locally enacted law debated and passed in the very House in which he sits as a legislator.

But his survival instincts were triggered when he was placed under immense pressure a year ago, for not coming clean, in Parliament, on his party's involvement with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

When it was time for Golding and his Government and party to be exposed, the defiant stance he had adopted in 2006 was promptly cast aside.

It was now time for the prime minister to take the moral high ground.

Now that the man, who used privileged bank information five years ago, is on the receiving end, Golding sanctimoniously declared that the WikiLeaks information was stolen property.

It was the same Golding who had asked Portia Simpson Miller which skin she was in after she claimed that the oil-trading firm, Trafigura Beheer, had donated money to the PNP, and not to her administration.

The PNP president was at pains to separate the party and the Government she led, but Golding would have none of it.

After surviving thunderous calls for his resignation from powerful organisations, by apologising to the nation, Golding told the Manatt-Dudus commission that his administration did nothing wrong.

Now as the information begins to dribble through WikiLeaks, Golding has climbed atop the moral steeple.

Soon after the PNP won the 1989 general election, it was brought to public attention that a former labour minister, J.A.G. Smith, in the Jamaica Labour Party administration and his permanent secretary, Probyn Aitken, were convicted of conspiring to defraud the Farm Work Programme.

Smith had lost the Northern Clarendon seat when he was sent to prison.

At the end of the PNP's tenure in Government, Kern Spencer would join a small list of sitting Jamaican MPs who have faced criminal charges.

Check the ruling party's (either of them) negative reports from Amnesty International, the international human-rights watchdog, or the corruption index.

Instead of acknowledging that something in governance is amiss, our politicians hurl the blame at the messenger.

The failure to accept blame and administer corrective action appears to be at the heart of the leadership crisis bedevilling Jamaica.

Too many Jamaicans have become immune to the corruption virus that has been left largely unattended for much too long.

Gary Spaulding is a journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.