THE looming crisis in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) deepened yesterday with the financial managers of James Robertson’s winning campaign challenging Edward Seaga to produce evidence that their man was backed by “tainted money”.

They have also taken the matter to the police chief, ostensibly for his investigation.

In fact, Daryl Vaz, the chairman of Robertson’s finance committee, hinted at a libel suit against JLP leader Edward Seaga unless he either retracted the claims or produced the evidence. Lawyers, he said, were studying the tape of Seaga’s remarks on a radio talk show “with a view towards initiating legal action” against the JLP leader, the radio station and the show’s producers, The Breakfast Club.

Vaz also told Robertson in a memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Observer, that he and fellow committee members had decided that they would not respond to Seaga’s directive that he be told all who financed Robertson’s victorious run for one of the JLP’s four deputy leader’s slot. Robertson, who had defied Seaga’s urging to forego the race, beat long-time Seaga loyalist, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, in the election on Saturday.

Earlier yesterday, the JLP leader had gone on the Breakfast Club, which airs on HOT 102, to insist that he had credible information that money from questionable sources had helped to finance Robertson’s campaign.

“I am insistent on getting the list… The party is insistent on getting the list,” Seaga told the hosts of the current affairs programme. “… I want it in black and white.”

Seaga was responding to yesterday’s Observer report that his demand for the list of contributors to Robertson’s campaign, particularly in a context where it was being interpreted in some quarters as an act of peeve over the defeat of his protégé, had raised concerns over some of the JLP’s traditional big money backers.

Robertson is considered to be on the reformist wing of the party, a loose alliance of people believed to be eager for change in the leadership and who broadly subscribe to Bruce Golding’s agenda of constitutional reform and political transformation in Jamaica.

His victory over Grange was seen as giving momentum to Golding’s ambition for the post-Seaga leadership of the JLP.

Sources close to some of the concerned financiers had told the Observer that the financiers might withdraw support to the JLP if Seaga insisted on his plan and would say so in letters written to Vaz, which he could share with the party.

But Seaga told the Breakfast Club interviewers that it was only “certain of the contributors” who did not want their names divulged. “And those are the names I want,” Seaga said.

He was adamant that there was real cause for his concern about the source of the cash and said that his intent was to find out if there was more than what he already knew.

In a letter to Police Commissioner Francis Forbes, Vaz drew attention to Seaga’s remarks and said he had no information of contributions from “tainted sources”.

“I challenge Mr Seaga to publicly present such evidence,” Vaz said in his letter to Forbes. “Furthermore, since such evidence is in the possession of Mr Seaga, then he, in the capacity of Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, should present such to the relevant authorities in order that the appropriate criminal action may be taken.”

In an attempt at damage control as another JLP internecine fight threatened to swirl out of control, the party’s treasury, Chris Bovell and his deputy, Shirley Williams, sought to assure donors about confidentiality.

“In so far as confidentiality of the information (that Seaga has requested) is concerned, there is absolutely no donor in corporate Jamaica who has ever had any reason to voice any concern about disclosure of contributions,” they said in a statement. “Such information in the past has never been divulged, except to the party leader by virtue of the fact that he signs the letters of acknowledgment and appreciation to the donors. The information being provided by the candidates in this instance will be treated in like manner.”

Bovell and Williams also sought to assure people that Robertson was not being singled out for persecution, saying that all the candidates in the deputy leader race had been reminded of a policy that the treasurer clears the list of potential donors to be approached for substantial sums.

This policy, they claimed, “prevented the donors from being bombarded with several requests at the same time while also ensuring that the party maintained its distance from undesirable sources and ensured accountability”.

Seaga, in his Breakfast Club interview, indicated that he was moving towards an embrace of state funding of political parties to prevent the political process from being “overwhelmed” by money from suspect sources.

This issue, first raised substantially by the late Michael Manley in the late 1980s, has been on and off the political agenda over the years, but has, at best, had lukewarm reception from the JLP.

“I don’t think it is a perfect system,” Seaga said yesterday, “but I think it is a way of nipping” what is an emerging problem.