THE Opposition People’s National Party yesterday shredded the findings of the recent commission of enquiry into the Dudus/Manatt affair, calling it, among other things, empty, devoid of logic, constituting a grand cover-up, and a colossal waste of time.

Legal officials of the party told journalists at a news conference called to officially convey its position on the findings of the enquiry held earlier this year, that the commissioners failed miserably to carry out their functions.

“The recommendations were weak, very weak, extremely weak and in some instances irrelevant. They lacked thought and have very little to do with the terms of reference. There was no analysis of the evidence. They ignored the evidence adduced at the enquiry and came to some conclusion which it is difficult to see how they did,” said KD Knight, the party’s lead attorney at the enquiry.

“That they concluded that there was no misconduct on the part of anyone is amazing, having regard to the fact that they themselves defined misconduct and in the definition of misconduct they referred to inappropriate behaviour,” he said.

“In their findings, for example, they said that the behaviour, for example, of the prime minister was inappropriate and therefore one cannot understand, having defined misconduct in the way they did, having made the finding that they did, how could they possibly, rationally conclude that there was no misconduct?” Knight said of the 58-page report.

Echoing Opposition Leader and PNP president Portia Simpson Miller’s earlier description of the enquiry as a whitewash, Knight said that the commissioners — Emil George, Donald Scharschmidt and Anthony Irons — dealt with matters that were not in their terms of reference, including constitutional issues which they were not qualified to handle.

“Constitutional issues are dealt with in the Supreme Court,” Knight said.

“On the ladder, the rung at which they are at is so low, that no reasonable person would expect them to be making such findings and indeed the findings on constitutional issues were irrelevant.

“They concluded that the authority to proceed ought to have been signed at an earlier stage. They concluded that there was a reasonable basis on which that could have been done and therefore to have gone further to determine whether the fugitive’s constitutional rights were breached was not something that was expected of them,” Knight said.

The enquiry was established by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to look into the Government’s handling of the extradition request by the United States for former fugitive Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, who once ran the West Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens.

It also sought to find out the role played by United States law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phelps, which stated officially that it was contracted by the Jamaican Government to lobby the US Government on the extradition matter.

Coke was captured by security personnel and extradited to the US a year ago, following a major search for him and bloody clashes in Tivoli Gardens which left 76 people dead based upon official police numbers.

Turning to some of the recommendations made by the commissioners, Knight said that there was nothing special about them.

“One recommendation is that the attorney general need not be a member of either House. Eureka! There are very few persons who did not know that and that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terms of reference,” he said.

Knight, a former Cabinet minister and member of parliament, now a senator, said that the commissioners had no business examining the quality and volume of work that is done by the Attorney General’s Department and the Ministry of Justice, while subsequently recommending that the agencies should be headed by two different people.

“You are talking about workload there basically. They are saying that it should be split based upon workload,” said Knight. “Their reasoning is warped. The intellectual rigour that was expected there was completely absent.”

He also took a swipe at Golding and his Cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday, saying that the prime minister should have taken himself out of the executive.

“Without a shadow of a doubt he should have separated himself from the Cabinet,” saig Knight. “What is important is that he has now separated an individual (Dorothy Lightbourne) from both those posts (justice minister and attorney general) and he has separated that individual from the Cabinet. It is deceptive to say that that separation has nothing to do with the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips enquiry.”

The Queen’s Counsel described the suggestion made by the commissioners for powers of a Supreme Court judge to be given to future commissioners as “simply ridiculous”, saying that resident magistrates do not have that power.

“Can you imagine if they had that power and sought to use that power what this report would have been like? Because had some lawyers not stood firmly, we would never have had a report like this, even as weak as it is, it would have been weaker, so the public should look at this and say to themselves, is it that they wanted to have stopped the search for the truth, because whilst they did not, in their report, capture the truth, the public did and the public cannot ever thank the media for the tremendous work done in that regard,” Knight said, suggesting again that the commissioners “disgorge every dollar they were paid, because they earned not one cent of it”.

Senior attorney Patrick Atkinson echoed some of the sentiments expressed by Knight, adding that it was “absolutely nonsensical” to give the power of a high court judge to someone who is not qualified.

Regarding the criticism of the conduct of some lawyers at the enquiry, Atkinson said that the fingers of the commissioners were evidently pointed at Knight and himself.

“I have no doubt that they are talking about Mr Knight and myself, but if I had to do it again, I would have conducted myself as vigorously, if not more vigorously. When we got into that room, we could see that it was stacked against us. This has got to have been a colossal waste of money,” Atkinson said.