Just as we might have thought that the repartee and emerging civility between KD Knight and Prime Minister Golding would augur well for the remaining days of the Manatt/Dudus enquiry, on Wednesday things went deeply south as both men traded insults at each other. The nation, and especially the nation’s young, were treated to a spectacle that is unworthy of those who offer themselves for leadership in the society. Bear in mind that Mr Knight has held substantial posts in previous PNP governments, and the prime minister as leader of government has to set a high tone, however roiled he may be by the rudeness of a cross-examiner at a commission of enquiry.

In a previous article, “Bruce, Manatt and Warmington”, I had anticipated that this turn of events could happen. I wrote then: “He (the prime minister) must answer reasonable and prudent questions that are aimed at arriving at the truth, but he should not be constrained to even respond to scurrilous questions intended to embarrass rather than to enlighten. Although he will find it difficult to, he must restrain himself and not seek to go toe-to-toe with the PNP lawyers when they get rude and boorish. They will seek to roil him, to embarrass him and try to show him up as incompetent…” For a while Mr Knight started out by being respectful to the prime minister. Until Wednesday he saw him as a worthy combatant, a characteristic he did not recognise in Ms Lightbourne. I did not expect him to cut the prime minister any slack. I expected him to ask the PM irritating questions that would make him squirm in his seat. But I also expected him to be mindful that the witness sitting before him is the prime minister of all Jamaica and should be afforded the respect the office deserves.

I should have been disabused of this optimism, given the tribal nature of our politics which has also become a defining feature of this enquiry. As soon as the political “duppies” were resurrected, both men went for the jugular in a contest of wills and insults that left the chairman of the enquiry in a quandary. Let us concede that the matter of cross-examination in any judicial or quasi-judicial engagement is by nature tough, penetrating and in some instances brutal in the attempt to arrive at the truth. Whatever one may say about him, KD Knight has developed certain skill sets as a cross-examiner in these proceedings. His style is penetrating and unnerving and any witness within his cross hairs is fair game. But this does not give him the licence to be rude or disrespectful to the witness. A cross-examiner has tremendous power over a witness and one of those is the power of suggestion. It is a useful tool against the examiner-in-chief’s “soft” treatment of a witness and can have a powerfully destabilising influence on a comfortable witness.

Members of the legal profession know that counsels can behave in a way that can bring this powerful tool into disrepute. The Jamaican public and the worldwide internet audience will judge how Mr Knight has used this tool in this enquiry: whether in offering his suggestions to his witnesses he has been fair and has not used demeaning and embarrassing language in addressing them. If the verdict is that he has been demeaning, this will amount to the abuse of a privileged position since the counsel knows that the person sitting before him is “captive” and has to sit there and take it. This smacks of an agenda that is outside of the purview of the truth that one is trying to arrive at.

The prime minister could not contain himself and lost his cool on several occasions as Knight chipped away at him. This did not contribute to the civility of the proceedings which became a concern to the prime minister’s counsel who at one stage had to remind Chairman Émil George that the whole world was watching and the reputation of the country was being hurt. Last Wednesday’s exchanges have shown how difficult a job it is to maintain order in tribal political contests between two gladiatorial titans in a fully engaged political war. There is no doubt that Mr Knight’s intention is to “wound” the prime minister politically. He has delivered some serious blows, but these have been diminished and blunted, in the word of the prime minister, by “asinine” repartees from Mr Knight. His behaviour may make him look good to his PNP constituents, but to the rising ranks of the independent voter his behaviour will be seen as one that is unworthy of him. He received a standing ovation at a recent PNP meeting because he is doing exactly what is expected of him and his constituents are happy with his performance.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and the Jamaican treasury is bleeding. Already we have been told that the cost of the enquiry has doubled to over $70 million. My prediction is that at the end of the day the truth will be buried in the rubble left by the gladiatorial contest between the PNP and the JLP. The political reputation of the country will be further damaged. The commissioners will give their report, but the only people who will be interested in it are the politicians who have to comment on it in Parliament and journalists whose job it will be to report on it. But the country will be no closer to the truth concerning the Manatt/Dudus matter than it did before the commission was given its mandate. The only people who would have benefited from this enquiry are the lawyers. The interested person who followed the proceedings would have enjoyed a few laughs while they lasted, but at the end of the day it is the Jamaican taxpayer that would have paid dearly for this charade that should never have happened in the first place.

Rev Raulston Nembhard is a marriage and family therapist intern.

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