With Both Houses of Parliament idled by the staging of Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007, the meeting of the Privileges Committee took centrestage on Wednesday.

Government members of the committee want Opposition MP Karl Samuda to apologise, or face sanctions, for suggesting that former Prime Minister P J Patterson had received a report from Port Authority Chairman Noel Hylton on the US$43-million overrun at the Sandals Whitehouse Hotel project.

Patterson had assigned Hylton to seek a resolution to disputes between the investors – the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (now Development Bank of Jamaica), both government bodies, and private investor, Gorstew Limited.

Hylton was expected to report back to the prime minister and the Cabinet. But Patteson said he never received the report. His successor, Portia Simpson Miller, said she has not received it either. And the Government says the Cabinet has not seen it.

However Hylton, in carefully drafted responses, has virtually admitted drafting a report, but insists he never submitted it to either the PM or the Cabinet.

Samuda had told the House of Representatives last October that Patterson must have seen the report, copies of which have been circulated to members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and is understood to be available on the Internet.

After failing twice to make any progress in its mission, the Privileges Committee invited Samuda to last week’s sitting to explain his position. Samuda attended, but it hasn’t helped the process.

The Opposition MP refused to apologise and leader of the opposition, Bruce Golding, challenged Government members to sanction the entire Opposition for fully supporting Samuda and the positions he has taken in the issue.

Golding said that the crux of the matter was not whether Hylton had submitted the report to Patterson or not, “but whether Mr Patterson was aware of the contents and did not share it with his Cabinet, or failed to act in a manner which the contents would have required of him”.

But it was Opposition MP Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange (Central St Catherine) who turned the committee on its head when she suggested that it call Hylton to the next meeting to explain what happened to his report.

“I think that as a committee, we have a duty to summon Mr Hylton to attend the meeting,” Grange suggested.

She was supported by Golding, who also insisted that Patterson be summoned before the committee as well.

Government member Charles Learmond (South West Clarendon), said that he had no objection to inviting Hylton to appear before the committee, as the Opposition’s arguments were “highly speculative” and Hylton could shed some light on them.

Government Member Dr Patrick Harris (North Trelawny) totally disagreed, suggesting that Hylton’s presence would add nothing. The other Government member, Deputy Speaker O T Williams, was not sure it would help, either.

But the Speaker, Michael Peart, who chairs the committee, had no objection.

“I believe it is appropriate,” Peart said, after Grange insisted.

What is interesting is that, despite Hylton’s assignment, nobody has ever sought to have him air his position before any of the House committees, prior to now.

Peart said he would also provide a chronology of the events leading to Samuda’s censure by the House last October.

The Speaker also seemed prepared to take a bet from Samuda that, if he (Peart) found a quote from him (Samuda) in the Hansard saying that Patterson had instigated a “cover up” of the report, he (Peart) should apologise to Samuda.

However, the problem is that the committee may not be able to meet again this fiscal year. Parliament is to be prorogued this week to make way for the start of the 2007/2008 session.

Incidentally, Wednesday’s meeting started nearly two hours late because of a conflict of meetings at Gordon House where both the Privileges Committee and the Joint Select Committee meeting on the Incest (Punishment) and Offences Against the Person Act were scheduled for the same time, despite the high level of public interest in both and the lack of accommodation.

It was inexplicable how this meeting of the Privileges Committee, with the high public interest, could have been planned for the Government’s meeting room, which cannot even seat half of its 36 members comfortably at any one time.

Eventually, the meeting was moved to the Jamaica Conference Centre.

Is the Speaker growing anti-media?

Speaker of the House of Representatives Michael Peart has been developing a very poor record in terms of how he treats the media covering meetings of Parliament and its committees.

The speaker needs to decide when the media are welcomed to his meeting and when they are not.

Last week’s schedule of committee meetings circulated to the media, included a meeting of the Ethics Committee, of which he is the chairman. However, when the Observer reporter turned up, she was told that the press was not invited.

Members of the Ethics Committee have explained that no decision has yet been taken as to whether the media should be allowed into their meetings or not. The committee is still awaiting a report on how ethics committees in other Commonwealth nations operate.

Since this committee is still undecided, it should not be too much to hope that the chairman would inform the press when meetings are “in camera”.

This was not done last week. The result was that those members of the media who turned up for Thursday morning’s Ethics Committee meeting were told by the Clerk that they would not be allowed in.

The Ethics Committee may be a bit apprehensive, as it is the committee which looks into ethical issues like members of both the House and the Senate seeking constitutional exemptions, so that they can acquire government contracts. But of more concern to the media must be the record of the current Speaker in how he handles the media.

Speaker Peart has not only barred journalists with his “doodle door”, but he has confined them to areas of the gallery which make their work very uncomfortable. It is not unusual to see reporters sitting on the floor trying to send through reports or to be constantly hounded by the security officers.

The experiences last week have not

helped either.

On Wednesday, one committee the Speaker chairs, the Privileges Committee, tried to hold the meeting on the proposal to censure Karl Samuda in the Government’s meeting room, which has no accommodation for the media.

Fortunately, the leader of the Opposition, Bruce Golding, opposed the move and the meeting was switched to the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.

Then a day later, the media were barred from the meeting of the Ethics Committee, which Peart also chairs.

Seems like Mr Speaker is getting very uncomfortable with the presence of the media inside Gordon House.

Has PM Simpson Miller seen the Hylton report?

The following exchange between the leader of the opposition, Bruce Golding, and the speaker of the House of Representatives and chairman of the House’s Privileges Committee, Michael Peart, was extracted from last week’s meeting of the committee which is seeking to sanction MP Karl Samuda for allegedly misleading members:

Golding: The censure motion hangs on whether the report was submitted. But even if the report was not submitted, if the contents were made available to the former PM, then the indictment of that PM would still stand because he was aware of the contents.

Peart: And Mr Samuda has demonstrated that?

Golding: Mr Samuda has demonstrated, very persuasively, that he must have.

Peart: You mean circumstantially?

Golding: Not circumstantially. But you want talk about circumstantially: the current PM got up in Parliament and said, in answer to questions that I raised, that she has heard about the report but she has never seen it. Now, you don’t find that unbelievable?

This is a document that is in the public domain. This is a document that is posted on a website. This is a document around which there is intense public controversy.

Then you mean to say that the prime minister, in discharge of her responsibilities, notwithstanding the fact that she may have never received the report formally, you mean she doesn’t appraise herself of what is in the report?

Give credit to Mr K D Knight. At least in the censure motion debate he said, having heard about the matter, he took it upon himself to go and get a copy of the report and read it.

Censure me if you will, but I can’t believe that a prime minister, with a sense of her own responsibility, could have a matter like that where the document is available but says, ‘I don’t want to see it, I’ve never seen it, I don’t want to hear about it, keep it as far away from me as possible! That would be dereliction of duty in the highest extreme.

No one can convince me that the P J Patterson that I know, knowing that the work has been done or substantially done, would have said well, ‘you’re not submitting a report, but I am not interested to hear what you found so far that I can use to guide me in terms of the executive decisions that I make. This is a charade, you know. This is a charade.