Mark Wignall

"If I had known then what I know now, I would not have opened my mouth."

- AJ Nicholson, legal adviser to the PNP and attorney general as told to Emily Crooks, October 9, 2006.

Unravelling the hastily spun web of deceit was the easy part. Harder was the retreat into the closed-door silence than the failed attempt at convincing us that the new positions were not just another tangled web designed to save face and personnel, but potentially and unwittingly fashioned to dig a grave for the PNP.

More difficult was salvaging the reputation of a party founded on the first principles of honesty in leadership. At the launch of the PNP in 1938, Norman Manley said, "We don't want a foolish electorate at the mercy of every demagogue, and unable to unravel the tricks of undisciplined politicians who regard politics as a means of self-aggrandisement."
As Norman Manley spoke, Howard Cooke, Jamaica's elder statesman (up until recently Jamaica's governor-general), heard him. But on that September day in 1938, a much younger man and one of the proud founders of the PNP representing the Jamaica Union of Teachers, Howard Cooke heard the concluding words of that speech, "But if we start all right, if we never desert our own principles, if we appreciate those who regard the country as their home, those who believe that civilisation is possible for people of mixed origins, if we never allow people to deflect us from our goals."

Today, the PNP has come a long way from 1938 and, based on the Trafigura scandal, the passage and the goals of the party have become most distorted, confused and agonisingly troubling. Grown men have come before us in a panicked, despicable show of PNP unity around what has turned out to be a great lie in a national issue and, in the evolved tenets of "the new politics" which ran unfettered in the period during Patterson's run in 1992 to Portia Simpson Miller's ascendancy in 2006, the PNP now stands in a dark, slimy corner pleading with us to give it an ear.

Our first instinct is to dismiss it, shoo it away, but there is the perverse side of us saying, "Let's give it a listen, let us hear our fill of more tales, more obfuscation, more deceit, more national pain at viewing the mass disgrace of those whom we the people chose to represent us."
Having done so with the PNP repeatedly, we have collectively as a people empowered that party to take us to the zenith of our social and economic potential. Instead, it has dragged us down with it and now we stand as a fallen people; a grand laughing stock and a failed experiment by some in the global community.

"Make no bones about it. The world community is following this one," said one foreign official to me (recently), and who requested anonymity. "We have enjoyed a healthy trading relationship with Jamaica over many years and as you know we have provided assistance in many areas. Obviously, we have concerns and have already convened a top-level meeting to formulate a position, although I rather doubt that we will be issuing any unsolicited or quoted stances on this matter."

The choice before us now is not so much the customary one between the PNP and the JLP as it is the pressing need to end the unfortunate life of this PNP administration and allow the party time at self-flagellation, self-examination and a resuscitation of its core beliefs. In that need to have a long recess, the PNP must purge itself of the new rogues and the old arrangements which brought the rising of incompetence, suspicion and rascality close to the top of the PNP cup.

The firing of general-secretary (from the PNP) and minister of information (from the Cabinet) Colin Campbell was expected. The most important part of his "resignation" letter states, "Having regard to the size of the contribution, it is regrettable that I had not shared the full details with you, the chairman, the legal advisor or any other officer of the Party. For this I take full responsibility. Please accept that at all times I acted with probity and in good faith in the receipt and disbursement of these funds." Yeah, right.

Let us absorb that carefully. Flash back to last Wednesday with PNP chairman, Bobby Pickersgill, and legal adviser, A J Nicholson, going out on a most shaky limb to defend stoutly and arrogantly the Trafigura "donation". Going even further back, it is obvious that Mr Campbell, in attempting to secure an "offered donation" of over $30 million from Trafigura, had apparently forgotten just one little matter. He didn't tell the party chairman and, by extension, the PNP. Or, so he says.

".it is regrettable that I had not shared the full details with you, the chairman, the legal advisor or any other officer of the Party." That parting shot clears some very important people, but am I hearing right?

In August, Colin Campbell, general-secretary of the PNP, is about to receive a hefty "donation" from a foreign source which also just happens to be doing business with the Government, and that officer of the party doesn't "share the full details" with any other officer? If he didn't share the "full details" with them, how much of the details did he share with them, if indeed he did share anything? The most important implication in Colin Campbell's letter is that some details were shared but not the "full details". What was the import of the details shared?

If he shared nothing with them, they knew nothing about the "details" until the weekend meetings. Let us give the PNP the benefit of the doubt and agree that Colin Campbell took it on himself to be a one-man band. First, the wire transfers into the CCOC Association (Colin Campbell Our Candidate) arrived in three parts, each just a little over $10 million.

What was Trafigura trying to do by splitting up the "donation" into three parts? Is there some declaration or "gift" threshold under Dutch or Swiss law which Trafigura was trying to circumvent? We need to hear from Trafigura.

The first part of the "donation" of $10.7 million arrives on September 6. On the following day, Campbell draws a cheque to SW Services (Team Jamaica) for $10 million. We have been told by the PNP that SW Services is the new PNP campaign funding account. Of interest is the fact that on the reverse side of the $10-million cheque to SW Services is written, "a/c to be opened".

On the same day that Trafigura wires $10.16 million and $10.4 million to CCOC Association, another Colin Campbell cheque to SW Services (September 12) is issued in the sum of $20 million. We have to assume that the account SW Services (Team Jamaica) was opened between the date of the first cheque, September 7, and the second, September 12.
Then, of course, Colin Campbell draws a cheque to himself for $320,000. He does all of this before the "donation" or the "gift" is properly lodged and accounted for in the PNP account, SW Services (Team Jamaica).
If the $30 million was lodged in the account of SW Services, which is supposed to be the PNP's campaign funding account, how in heaven's name did it come about that ".I had not shared the full details with you, the chairman, the legal advisor, or any other officer of the Party"?

Are we to believe that $30 million is lodged in the PNP's campaign-funding account and no officer seeks to determine details of its arrival? Why is the PNP still playing games with us and treating us with contempt?

Also, where is the other $7 million? Trafigura has said it has a "commercial" arrangement with "CCOC Associates" and the "donation" it speaks of is made in relation to the account of CCOC Associaton only. Where is the other $7 million? Also, if the arrangement was a "commercial" one, did Campbell issue an invoice to Trafigura? What services did Campbell perform for Trafigura?

Was Colin Campbell working for the PNP as gen-sec, the Cabinet as salaried minister, and by what unique arrangement was his middleman status between Trafigura and the PNP conferred on him? Is it not reasonable to ask: Was Colin Campbell paid and, if so, how much?

Am I to believe that $30 million is lodged into the PNP's campaign-funding account starting from September 7 and between that date and October 7 - 30 days - neither the prime minister and PNP president, Portia Simpson Miller, nor PNP chairman and high-ranking minister, Bobby Pickersgill, nor PNP legal adviser and attorney-general AJ Nicholson, were informed of the lodgements and the details surrounding such?

According to Campbell's "resignation" letter, it was he alone who possessed the details of the Trafigura deal . I find that extremely hard to swallow.

The PNP had its annual conference in September and that month is always an expensive one for the PNP. By Colin Campbell's own account: "I made the arrangements for the funds to be paid into the campaign account, in accordance with their (Trafigura) wish for confidentiality." The lodgements were there. Let me ask readers the following:

Is it not likely that during annual conference month, the PNP president/prime minister and the PNP chairman would want to ask the person marshalling funds for the PNP - Colin Campbell - what was the state of funding and, having got the information, would they not want to know more about the generous "donation" of J$30 million?

We have it on the authority of Colin Campbell, a man whose word has been found suspect, that the entire officer corps of the PNP had no knowledge of the "full details" of the Trafigura "donation". Having been 'fired' by the party but allowed to sign a resignation letter, quite probably written by a legal mind, Colin Campbell is either playing the role of fall guy, or the "full details" were never shared.

If Colin Campbell was acting outside of the purview of the PNP and collected money from Trafigura without sharing the "full details" of it with the officers of the PNP, how then was the money lodged in the account of SW Services (Team Jamaica) which we are told is the PNP's campaign fund-raising account? Would there not be PNP people in charge of that account? Who are they, and would they not have erupted in glee at the "gift" and asked questions?

If SW Services (Team Jamaica) is really the PNP campaign fund-raising account, when was it opened, and who in the officer corps of the PNP knew of it? What is the meaning of the "SW" in SW Services (Team Jamaica)?

In the rush of the PNP panic last weekend, the prime minister directed that the money be returned to Trafigura. AJ Nicholson has since determined that there was hanky-panky, and we have it from him that in the new dispensation he is not prepared to support hanky-panky. Congratulations AJ, that is, if your statement to Emily Crooks is not just more "PNP strategy" designed to close ranks around this great embarrassment.

And the prime minister, who has lauded Colin Campbell for his "sterling service", and says she does not want the party to be embroiled in the controversy, has decided to return the funds. I sympathise with the prime minister. If the PNP had kept the money, it would have kept the matter alive in the eyes of the public. But Catch-22 lurks.

By refusing to keep the "donation", the PNP has, in essence, said that there is taint on the money. And it wants the troubled Trafigura to accept that and bury itself? Once the money is returned, the PNP opens itself to claims of immoral and maybe illegal possession of the funds recently held.

Why did Trafigura make the money transfers to CCOC in three payments of $10 + million and why did it waver in its explanation of the "donation"?

Who were the PNP people who met Trafigura in August and September? The PNP wants us to believe that Colin Campbell is the only fly in the ointment and dismissing him must mean the end of the matter. Not so, prime minister.

It's time for the prime minister to stop playing possum, upend the PNP, throw out those who are up to skulduggery and move the country forward.

If there is one leader who can survive this crisis, it is Portia. A little over six months ago, outgoing Prime Minister PJ Patterson said, ".I will take comfort in the knowledge that in giving to my fellow citizens, I have done so with a clean hand and a pure heart".

Portia now needs to add real meaning to PJ's words. We want to hear our prime minister say, "I come to you with clean hands and a pure heart".

To demonstrate that and to reinforce her resolve, she needs to call in the DPP with a view to sending someone or some people to a forced, lengthy, institutionalised, short-pants holiday. And, she needs to fire Bobby Pickersgill (from the PNP chairman's post) who insulted this nation last week.

- observemark@gmail.com

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