When US President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 1998, it was done for malfeasance in office, perjury and obstruction of justice.

In layman’s terms, when Clinton had a sexual encounter with willing White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he did it in his official capacity as president, plus he did it in the precincts of the White House. That covers the malfeasance bit, if not the quality of the encounter.

Perjury and obstruction of justice simply mean that at some stage he lied and then attempted to cover up the lie. Were it not for the political vote of the Democratic Senate, which acquitted him, he would have been booted out of office.

At present, Prime Minister Golding has invited himself to the way of the gallows, all over again. Damning e-mails carried in the August 22 Sunday Gleaner confirmed what most public commentators, including myself, had long deduced – that the engagement of US law firm lobbyists, Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, was undertaken by the government of Jamaica and not by the JLP – as Golding, his government and hardcore JLP supporters would have us believe.

Even applying 10th grade logic, how could the JLP engage the services of a go-between to lobby the US government to act effectively in contravention of existing Treaty arrangements between the US and Jamaica at the very time that the Jamaican government is formed by the (same) JLP administration, which is duty bound to honour such agreements? Would that not be obstruction of justice?

But even if the JLP had engaged Manatt, that still would not let Mr Golding off the hook because it would mean that a clandestine arm of the government, led by none other than the prime minister, was acting covertly, while publicly we were being fed a diet of lies to explain the delays in the extradition of Dudus.

The prime minister insists, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that at the time of the Manatt appointment, he had conveniently divested himself of the PM label and was JLP leader. According to the latest release from the Office of the Prime Minister, Golding was acting in his role of JLP leader and maintained as his objective the JLP appointment of Manatt.

Even if hardcore JLP supporters would like to buy into Golding’s position, where is the evidence of this? Why did the OPM in issuing the release not provide this evidence? Well, it is my belief that it cannot provide any, because none exists. Why do I believe that? Simply because it is obvious that the engagement was a government-to-government one.

Months ago I had written in an article that if the prime minister refused to come clean on the Manatt issue, by the time the air cleared, the nation would be demanding more than Golding’s scalp. It seems that we are at that place now.

Also caught in the cross hairs of this conspiracy to deceive the Jamaican people are two government officials, the solicitor general and the attorney general. Based on their feigned ignorance and apparent ease in being used as puppets by their political masters, they have unwittingly expressed a desire to be relieved of their posts. How can Dorothy Lightbourne, the attorney general, and Douglas Leys, the solicitor general, continue? How can they be trusted any longer?

It is not as if many of us did not know this all along – that the power once wielded by Dudus extended to the highest rung of the JLP government. It is not that many of us had not laughed at the government’s puerile attempt to lead us round the mulberry bush as various spokespersons on its behalf told us that the Manatt appointment was a JLP one. It is not that we did not see the gaping hole in Golding’s sham apology as he threw away a grand opportunity to come full frontal and tell us the truth.

The real hurt is the evidentiary confirmation that a conspiracy of lies existed and that it was led seemingly by the very prime minister that some of us, including myself, were prepared to forgive because we knew more about the power of Dudus than we were prepared to admit in the pages of a newspaper. The salt in the wound of that hurt is that the government, caught in a big lie, cannot now admit anything new and launch into the Great Apology, Chapter 2. It is forced to continue lying, to ensure that the first deception is seen (for the records) as truth.

One cannot apologise for an apology.

But the ultimate point of all of that hurt is that the government and the prime minister actually believe that we the people are fools.

Politically the government, led by the “new and different” Bruce Golding of 1995, has given way to Golding the surreptitious in the present times, the man who must be trusted at our own peril.

The belief trend in the rungs of the JLP administration is that the PNP is in no position to assume the responsibility of government. JLP ministers and government officials have been able to convince themselves that as long as the economy continues its slow crawl up the poverty position we were in three years ago, as long as “one-one” jobs return, as long as interest rates veer in a downward direction, as long as the PNP remains in its push-pull mode, the next election will see another JLP win.

Whether that is true or not, that political arrogance is rife among some in the JLP Cabinet and could probably explain the government’s present stance.

It is my belief that with glaring evidence to the contrary, the government is forced to hold to its story that the Manatt appointment was a JLP one, because in doing so, it can continue to refuse to tell us who was the basic source of funding in paying Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.

One lie forces itself on another. The press releases from the information ministry have not indicated, as did the e-mails carried in the Sunday Gleaner, one document with “JLP” on it or e-mails emanating from Belmont Road, yet we are expected to believe the drivel and the tissue of lies.

With the publication of the emails, I cannot see the country breathing free again any time soon. The only thing the prime minister can add to the mix is giving us the source of the funds that were used to pay the Manatt firm. While he is at it, we would also like him to explain why a decent, committed Jamaican, Dr Ronald Robinson, was forced to resign over the Manatt issue.

Of paramount importance, and all things being considered, once the breach of public trust has reached socially and politically unacceptable proportions as they have now reached, the one decent path to take is the prime minister’s resignation. That is the only escape route. Of course, he would be forced to lock arms with the attorney general and the solicitor general as they all head for the exit.

observemark@gmail.com