Getting to the point of ugly
We really don’t know what to make of last week’s revelations in Parliament concerning the US law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.
According to our prime minister, Mr Bruce Golding, his Government has had absolutely no contractual dealings with the firm, or Mr Harold Brady, the attorney-at-law who, according to the Opposition People’s National Party’s Dr Peter Phillips, was acting on its behalf.
“The Government of Jamaica has not engaged any legal firm, any consultant, any entity whatsoever, in relation to any extradition matter other than to deploy the resources that are available within the Attorney General’s Department who has a duty and responsibility to guide the Government on these matters,” Mr Golding said to Dr Phillips’ thinly-veiled allegation of yet another instance of corruption.
We desperately want to believe Mr Golding.
But he’s making it too hard — impossible, really — for us.
What, for instance, does he expect us to make of his vehement — and as it turned out — ill-informed denial coupled with his subsequent admission that the solicitor general actually did meet with the US law firm, if only to advise that its services would not be immediately contracted?
Who has been paying whom $US100,000 per quarter?
And for what?
Could it really be that the Government is totally above board and that the rest of us who are wondering if our taxes were really surreptitiously spent on foreign legal talent to fight off the US’ extradition request for Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the don of Mr Golding’s West Kingston constituency, are paranoid and crazy?
Could it really be that Dr Phillips, Mr Brady and the principals of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips got it all horribly wrong?
Surely Mr Golding must realise that at some point the dialogue will have to move beyond the type of hasty denials and counter-allegations that have so far characterised his administration’s mediocre attempts at transparency on this issue?
The picture that has been emerging in the absence of frank disclosure since the publication of the US’ extradition request for Mr Coke to answer charges of drug- and gun-running has never been anything but embarrassing.
However, the latest information looks set, pending clarification, to take it to an unprecedented level of ugly.
And if it ever gets there, the best salesmen in the world won’t be able to pretty it up.
