Six years ago when our former Prime Minister P J Patterson opened Jamaica’s shores to Haiti’s ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he collected kudos from sections of the local and regional community.

“A wonderful gesture,” is how St Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves described the move, which, according to Mr Patterson, was made on humanitarian grounds in order to facilitate Mr Aristide’s reunion with his family pending the conclusion of arrangements for his permanent exile elsewhere.

Others were less understanding.

“It is a sort of diplomatic controversy that we would have done well to avoid… for example, Mr Aristide’s lawyers… made statements that following consultations with Mr Aristide they’re filing legal action against the United States Government for allegedly removing him from Haiti against his will, and against four French officials… for (alleged) complicity in his forced removal from Haiti… Now, are those legal initiatives going to be pursued under his directive from his temporary domicile in Jamaica, and where is that going to put us in terms of an unnecessary diplomatic row?”

Guess who that piece of reasoning came from?

Answer: None other than our own Prime Minister Bruce Golding whose Jamaica Labour Party was in Opposition at the time.

The wisdom of staying in the good books of the United States, albeit at the expense of a regional colleague, who was accused, not of drug-running, but of being wrong for the country which he was democratically elected to govern, seemed pretty clear to Mr Golding back then.

Fast-forward to 2010.

Once again Jamaica is at odds with the United States, this time over the reputed Don of Mr Golding’s West Kingston constituency, Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, whom the US wants to answer charges of gun- and drug-running.

And even though the current plot involves far more complex legal issues which need to be resolved in a court of law, the implications are the same.

We are staring down the face of a diplomatic row.

And no matter how much we quarrel among ourselves, no matter how much Mr Golding tries to mask his relationship with Mr Coke with his selective flashes of respect for due process and constitutional rights, the problem is not going to just fade away.

No, this one seems to be here to stay until it is resolved — one way or another.

In the meantime what do we do?

Do we join hands with Mr Dwight Nelson, our national security minister, and skip past the elephant that is called ‘Mr President’? Do we pretend that his advice to the Senate on Friday regarding the inaccuracies of the data in the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report is the most important issue with which to concern ourselves just now?

According to Mr Nelson, the number of arrests for drug offences as at 2009 stood at 8,465 — an increase of 1,408, or 20 per cent over the previous year — not 6,346 as quoted by the report.

As regards the report’s rather stinging observation that “The GOJ’s ambitious anti-corruption and anti-crime legislative agenda announced in 2007 remains stalled in Parliament” Mr Nelson, true to the traditional point-and-blame protocol, blamed the delay — albeit with some justification — on the Opposition.

We’re sure that there’s a point to all of this.

Too bad the elephant’s blocking it.