KINGSTON, Jamaica – Opposition Senator Marlene Malahoo Forte is to make a statement to the Senate, today, following yesterday’s decision by the Senate’s Privileges Committee that her suspension was not validated by the Standing Orders.

The Privileges Committee said in a report, approved by the Upper House, yesterday, that: Senators are entitled to cite documents not before the Senate; there is no provision in the Standing Orders nor in the Westminster practice requiring a member, who is not a minister, to hand over a cited document; and, that there is no convention of the Jamaican parliament that gives the presiding officer the authority to direct a member, who is not a minister, to hand over a cited document.

This has paved the way for the Opposition senator to give her “personal explanation” of the issues that led to her suspension on October 23. This is allowed under the standing orders of the Senate, and was agreed to between the Government and Opposition senators, in search of a conciliatory path to resuming normality in the Upper House.

But, Senator Malahoo Forte told OBSERVER ONLINE yesterday that, despite the committee’s report, she was still concerned that the President of the Senate Floyd Morris did not disqualify himself from chairing the committee. She saw this as a conflict of interest.

“The exercise of his powers was under review: The question was; whether he has such power and, if he does have such power, was it exercised improperly,” she commented.

She said that, in that case, there was definitely a conflict of interest, and Senator Morris should have recused himself from the chairmanship of the committee, and the committee, itself.

Malahoo Forte was suspended for failing to produce a 2010 letter from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London offering to sit as an itinerant court in Jamaica, which she had cited in her contribution to the debate on the Bills seeking to replace the JCPC with CCJ as Jamaica’s final appellate court.

Balford Henry