Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart rejected last night that he threatened to withdraw funding from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) for its failure to discipline MP Andrew Gallimore and released a series of letters between himself and JLP leader Bruce Golding to prove the point.

In two letters to Golding complaining about, and responding to Golding’s public remarks about Gallimore’s June 28 parliamentary broadside against himself, Stewart made no mention of financial support to the JLP. Stewart, the owner of the Sandals hotel group, is also the chairman of this newspaper.

The statement last night issued by Stewart’s Air Jamaica Acquisition Group (AJAG), in response to a report carried by Cliff Hughes’ Nationwide News, was explicit on the issue.

“. At no time has Mr Stewart threatened the withdrawal of financial support as a means of exerting undue pressure on the JLP,” it said. “This would be impossible since Mr Stewart is not a major financial backer of the JLP.”

Stewart, in his letters to the JLP leader, did question what the party intended to do about what Golding himself conceded was not only an abuse of parliamentary privilege, but an exploitation by Gallimore of his JLP colleagues in the House.

“. I made it clear to him (Gallimore) that. he had abused the privilege of Parliament and exploited his parliamentary colleagues to launch an attack on you and your organisation in pursuance of a dispute between his brother and Air Jamaica,” Golding said in a July 15 letter to Stewart.

Gallimore received that dressing down at a July 29 emergency meeting of the JLP’s parliamentary group, called by Golding the day after Gallimore’s attack in the legislature on Stewart and AJAG.

AJAG, a consortium led by Stewart, was the vehicle used for the ownership of Air Jamaica for a decade until the airline was passed back to the Government last December.

Air Jamaica, in which the Government continued to hold 25 per cent during the period of privatisation, lost US$699 million in the decade that it was privately held.

The loss, the former owners say, was attributable primarily to issues out of their control, including the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, high fuel prices and, earlier on, limits to their capacity to fly new routes in the United States because of America’s dissatisfaction with Jamaica’s aviation regulatory capacity.

However, Gallimore, the JLP’s parliamentary whip, claimed in his parliamentary statement that there was “reckless mismanagement” and barely stopped short of accusing Stewart and his organisation of corruption during their tenure.

It has been widely held that Gallimore’s vitriolic attack was in pursuance of a private family vendetta. Gallimore is the brother of Miguel Gallimore, a former Miami-based employee of Air Jamaica who was made redundant during AJAG’s control of the airline under Stewart’s chairmanship.

Miguel Gallimore sued Air Jamaica, seeking upwards of US$2 million, and in the lead-up to the case accused the company of criminal activity, including money laundering and drug running.

In a confidential settlement with Air Jamaica on the eve of his brother’s parliamentary address, Miguel Gallimore withdrew the allegations against Air Jamaica as baseless. It is estimated that he accepted less than US$60,000 from Air Jamaica, although the figure has not been announced.

In the wake of Andrew Gallimore’s broadside and Golding’s apparent softening, on a radio talk show, of his initial condemnation of the parliamentary attack, Stewart raised the issue with the JLP leader in a July 12 letter. “How it is eventually handled will tell a whole lot about what the future holds for our public officials and by extension our country,” Stewart said.

Golding, in his response, said he was satisfied that Gallimore’s “behaviour was motivated less for his concern for the public interest than by the dispute between his brother and Air Jamaica”.

In a response to Golding, Stewart raised concern about the apparent linking by the JLP leader of Andrew Gallimore’s statement against Stewart and attacks in leaflets against Gallimore’s father, former government minister Neville Gallimore. In distancing himself from these attacks, Stewart said that “the Gallimore network”, in its campaign against Air Jamaica, had caused “deep offence to many persons and groups at various levels of the society”.

Stressing the damage that was done to his reputation by a “most vulgar and indecent display”, Stewart told Golding:

“This can only be remedied by a course of action that publicly demonstrates that the custodians of our future will not sacrifice principle on the altar of political expediency, or to protect family friendships.”