Dear Editor,

Mr Ken Jones, in his letter in the October 21 Observer, assures us that the proposed Commission of Enquiry into the Manatt matter will be a waste of money as “nary a head will roll” and it will distract us from “jobs, food and shelter”. He claims that history tells us this, but it is unclear what history he is talking about as there have been enquiries that have caused heads to roll. In 2002, for example, an enquiry into certain housing contracts brought down a minister of housing. Further, even if no heads roll, the people still have a right to learn how their business has been conducted and to request an enquiry if that is what is required.

Then again, it is possible that Mr Jones knows more about this particular matter and this is what allows him to confidently predict the outcome of the enquiry. If this is the case, perhaps Mr Jones may wish to share some of this knowledge with his fellow citizens by providing answers to the following questions:

By what right does a private organisation, the JLP, take it upon itself to negotiate matters affecting a treaty between the governments of the United States and Jamaica? Assuming the JLP was able to achieve some success in their initiative, how would this have been translated into concrete actions between the two governments, if the JLP was not in fact acting on behalf of one of these governments?

The e-mails the Gleaner said it recovered shows that the solicitor general communicated several times with Manatt. Why was the solicitor general of Jamaica involved in this JLP matter?

The attorney general of Jamaica, for several months, did not sign the extradition order because she claimed it would infringe the rights of one of our citizens. What became of these rights when the Manatt affair was exposed and the political career of the prime minister became threatened?

The hiring of Manatt by the Government of Jamaica to negotiate “treaty disputes” with the US would, it seems to me, have been a legitimate and proper activity. Why then was it necessary to do this by going through the JLP? What is the government’s position now on these “treaty disputes”? Have the principles behind these “disputes” gone the way of Mr Christopher Coke’s rights – disappeared in the face of threats to the political career of the prime minister?

Questions like these occupy the minds of many Jamaicans. This is so even as we follow Mr Jones’s advice and think about “jobs, food and shelter”. It turns out we can be concerned about more than one thing at a time. The admissions and apologies of the prime minister have not provided the answers. And even if “nary a head will roll”, we look forward to the commission to provide these answers (unless Mr Jones can provide them for us).

Hugh P Smythe

Trinidad and Tobago

hpsmythe@gmail.com