JAMAICANS have a wise saying: “Wha gaawn bad a mawnin, caan come good a evenin”, roughly translated to say what has gone bad in the beginning, can’t be made good in the end.

We wonder what it is going to take for our Government to come clean on the matter of its inappropriate affair with American law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

According to the latest stage of the saga, the firm, which was engaged — supposedly by the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) — to lobby the United States Government in the matter of its extradition request for Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, says it was paid US$15,000 more than was previously disclosed.

Not surprisingly, the Government has again distanced itself from this latest payment with claims that it was made by Harold Brady & Company — “as a final payment for the commercial obligations that existed as a result of the termination of the contract for services and which fell to the account of Harold Brady & Company”.

This smacks of the same type of duplicity and semantics that have marked this scandal from the get-go. Where did the money to pay Manatt come from? On whose behalf was it paid?

Moreover, why is the nation still being invited to suppose that Mr Brady was acting on his own accord and in his personal interest in engaging and paying for these services?

We have asked repeatedly in this space — but in vain, so far — for our Prime Minister Mr Bruce Golding to come clean on this matter once and for all.

The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) has been waiting — also seemingly in vain — on the prime minister to come clean so that it can resume the critical social transformation talks that it saw fit to suspend in light of the Manatt/extradition developments.

The public in general has been waiting — also in vain — for some sort of indication that it is safe to get back into the water as far as trusting the Government is concerned.

Yet, from what we have seen so far, no such sign is forthcoming. Instead, as we predicted a few months ago, the story is coming out bit by bit from all manner of sources, in a way that has left most of us wondering exactly what to believe.

For in spite of the current flurry of police activity, which has resulted in the incarceration of so many suspected criminals and the one-day treats for the inner-city victims who were traumatised when the Government was forced to stop defending Mr Coke and send the security forces after him, it is not clear whose side these leaders are on.

In the face of the failure of all of them — barring Mr Golding and, to a lesser extent, Mr Karl Samuda — to admit to any form of wrongdoing, is it realistic to believe that they are now champions in the fight against crime?

We would desperately like to believe that they are. But on the present score, to do that we would have to bury our collective head in the sand. It is clear — to us at least — that closure in the matter of ‘Dudusgate’ is not going to happen unless the Government comes clean.

Mr Golding must know that donning the armour of Patron Saint of Crime-fighting is not enough when you are the elected defender of good governance and the Constitution of a nation that prides itself on being a vibrant democracy.

Meanwhile, as Sparrow sang: “It’s bad, and getting more bad…”