Ken Chaplin

In my column of October 10, I asked whether the payment of the $31 million to the account of "Colin Campbell Our Candidate" (CCOC) in the FirstCaribbean International Bank by Trafigura Beheer was a gift, kickback or kick forward; that is to say, the money was given to help the party win the coming general elections. No one could be blamed for concluding that the payment was intended to influence the government to renew its contract with the Dutch oil trader. What resulted left Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and her administration groggy and discredited.

The PNP's chairman, Robert Pickersgill, who also carries heavy responsibility as minister of housing, transport, water and works, assured me last Thursday that the party did not ask Trafigura Beheer for any donation. Rather, the company offered the donation to the party to help fund its election campaign. The party accepted the money in good faith.
However, as I see it, Colin Campbell, then secretary general of the PNP, minister of information and development and the party's points man in the scandals, should have been more sensitive to the fact that Trafigura Beheer has had contracts with the government for at least four years previously and was negotiating a new contract. Pickersgill told me that this was the first time Trafigura Beheer had made any such offer.

Before accepting that amount of money, Campbell should have had a background check done on Trafigura Beheer. Campbell should have known also that it would be wrong to accept money from Trafigura Beheer when contract negotiations were taking place. He was forced to resign as general secretary as well as from his two ministerial portfolios, and I expect him to resign from the Senate also.

After Opposition Leader Bruce Golding released information about the $31-million deal in Parliament, Trafigura Beheer seemed to have panicked. The company radically changed its position. It said the money was not a donation but a commercial transaction with CCOC Association, fearing, it seemed, that the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials and other European authorities might regard the contribution as bribery. It was then that invoices were introduced to cover the company and perhaps the government.

A confidential source in the party informed me that Campbell kept the matter of invoices for work to be done by CCOC for Trafigura to himself. Neither Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller nor the chairman of the party knew about the invoices, until "very late in the day", and they are still regarding the money as a donation and not a commercial transaction.

The fact that Prime Minister Simpson Miller remained silent for two weeks while she gathered all the facts did not help the government's case. What she presented to Parliament after so long was disappointing. Indeed, all she had to do was to outline the circumstances of the payment, admit that the government unwittingly accepted the money when a contract was being negotiated with Trafigura Beheer and state that having regard to all the facts the money was to be returned. She could, of course, have ended the statement with an apology to the Jamaican people who like their leaders to come straight and not to bob and weave. Instead, Prime Minister Simpson Miller denied any wrongdoing in the affair and tried to throw a red herring across the trail by saying that the no-confidence motion by the Opposition was an attempt to divert attention from the censure motion against the Jamaica Labour Party's Karl Samuda. I believe some of her advisers are making her look bad.

The PNP is yet to understand and appreciate the psyche of the Jamaican people today as against what it was 10 years ago. They like their government to admit making a mistake. They would like what both Pickersgill and finance and planning minister, Dr Omar Davies, did. Pickersgill admitted that he had blundered in telling the public (before the parliamentary debate on the issue) that the contracts between Jamaica and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and Trafigura Beheer had been signed. I believe this will redound to his credibility.

Dr Davies made a most instructive statement, if rather late. He said that his party's acceptance of the $31-million donation from Trafigura Beheer which had a contract with the Jamaican government was a bad decision, an error of judgement. He is absolutely correct. But when did he come to this conclusion? Was it before Prime Minister Miller defended the donation in Parliament? In the past when I worked at the Office of the Prime Minister as press secretary and such issues of critical national importance came up, a committee comprising two or three key ministers and top civil servants would meet with the prime minister and craft out a response. Davies' late statement was of no help to the prime minister whose handling of the matter was poor.
In the meantime, there has been much discussion within the PNP, the government and among the public about the leaking of the information to the PNP by so far unknown persons to Bruce Golding. The bank in which the money was lodged has said it cannot at this point accept responsibility for the leaking of the information and it is still investigating. It is known that at least one other organisation in the banking system was aware that the money had been lodged into the account. I do not believe, as the governor of the Bank of Jamaica has said, that this isolated case of breach of the confidentially between bank and client is going to cause any great damage to the banking system. There has been no rush on the bank to close accounts. There are regulations that lodgements over a certain amount must be reported to the relevant authority. This does not mean that I am condoning the leak, but my sympathy is with Golding for revealing the information which is of immense national importance.

Buchanan not suitable

Prime Minister Portia Simpson has appointed Donald Buchanan, a former minister of water, as the new information and development minister to succeed Colin Campbell. However, I do not think that Buchanan is the most suitable person for the job. He lacks the temperament and finesse for the information portfolio. I am not sure how he will react when journalists put him under pressure.

A better person would be Vando Palmer, who was a polished, cool and articulate spokesman for the National Works Agency before he had to resign to run as a candidate in Central Manchester in the coming elections. He could replace Campbell as a senator and be appointed minister of information. This would give Buchanan more time to concentrate on development which is not being given sufficient attention by the government.

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