It wasn't me, says Waite

PEOPLE'S National Party (PNP) spokesman on education, Basil Waite, wants to shake rumours, long proved to be false, of financial impropriety and corruption while at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

The rumours re-emerged recently during his campaign to replace Kern Spencer as the PNP's representative in the St Elizabeth North East constituency in the next general elections.

Waite has spent the greater part of the last 10 years, unsuccessfully, trying to get behind him the nasty rumours that surfaced after a fund-raising event held by the University of the West Indies (UWI) Guild of Students, which he served as president between 1997 and 1998.

The Guild's much-publicised raffle of a Mercedes Benz motorcar in 2000 was laced with controversy, resulting in a lengthy delay for the winner to collect his prize, and claims about the irregular conduct of Guild officials among whom, some insisted, was Waite.

But Waite, now a senator and formerly a president of the PNP's Youth Organisation, insists he was not a student at the UWI at the time of the raffle and was therefore not involved in the activity.

"In life you will always have detractors. Unfortunately, we have a culture in Jamaica where gossiping and rumour are repeated as if they were true," Waite said in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

"Ask my peers who were on campus with me, those who worked with me. (Former Senator) Floyd Morris was advisor in the Guild. The former governor general, Kenneth Hall was the principal when I was there. Elsa Leo Rhynie who is there now, Dr Thelora Reynolds, Joe Perreira, you could go and ask all these persons. Check the records of my stewardship as hall chairman of Chancellor Hall and as guild president. Anyone who can bring to me any scandal or impropriety associated with my tenure in leadership at the University of the West Indies, then that person is not from this planet," said Waite, who served as hall chairman between 1996 and 1997.

Andrew Edwards, who was president of the guild at the time of the raffle, and who is now a prominent football coach and teacher, confirmed that Waite was not involved in the raffle.

Edwards, who works at the St Elizabeth Technical High School said that he too was taken aback by suggestions that Waite was involved in the Benz raffle.

"He wasn't even at school at the time that it happened," Edwards said. "Some people are trying to be malicious with it. I am hearing his name associated with it for the first time during this latest thing," said Edwards, referring to the campaign to replace Spencer, himself a former guild president.

Spencer is now before the courts on corruption charges in relation to the highly publicised Cuban lightbulb scandal in which energy-saving bulbs donated to Jamaica by the Cuban Government were alleged to have ended up costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Even with Edwards' disclosure, Waite is still concerned that damage done to his image may be irreparable.

"The fact is that it happened three years after I left campus," Waite said of the raffle. "If persons were willing to check the records they could find out who the guild president was. He is a public figure. So they can go and talk to him and find out if I was involved. They can find out who the vice president was. That person is also a public figure. They could find out who the cultural and entertainment affairs chairperson was, who handled the raffle, also a public figure.

"But persons are not eager to do their research. It is easier to say that I was the person, when in fact I had nothing to do with it, didn't know about it, except when I heard it on the news," Waite said.

As for the ill-fated raffle itself, Edwards said that the affairs surrounding it, were unfortunate.

"As a Guild Council we did not handle that raffle properly," he said. "The UWI Council, on the other hand, allowed it to play out in the press because we had a dispute with them, as that year we had the highest (tuition) fee increase.

"The raffle did go on and the gentleman did get the car, albeit sometime after the scheduled delivery date, but it is not true to say that Waite, or even Kern Spencer for that matter, was involved," Edwards said.

The raffle ran into trouble after the Guild said that it had collected only 20 per cent of the value of the vehicle from ticket sales and could not pay dealer EuroStar Motors the $1.7 million for the car which was offered as the grand prize.

UWI Council officials condemned the manner in which the students handled the matter and even postponed election of officers due the following year until the issue was sorted out.