KINGSTON, Jamaica — People’s National Party (PNP) Spokesman on national security, Fitz Jackson, has challenged the Minister of National Security, Dr Horace Chang, to produce a copy of any ruling by Jamaica’s Constitutional Court that the information-sharing MOUs with the US, UK and Canada were rendered unconstitutional.

Jackson’s request follows Chang’s confirmation on Tuesday that the country has signed a new security arrangement with the United States for the interception of communications.

The minister told the House of Representatives that the new arrangements became necessary after the Supreme Court had found that the MOU (memorandum of understanding) signed between the then Government and the United States in 2006 was “unsatisfactory and inadequate”, which he said meant that the use of that MOU was “unlawful”.

However, Jackson in a statement yesterday afternoon said both Chang and the Prime Minister Andrew Holness misled the House of Representatives, when they said the MOUs had been “deemed” unconstitutional and their use had to be discontinued. He said legal research and enquiries at the Court, yesterday, proved futile in finding any such ruling.

He noted that legal research has only been able to find one case of an application for an intercept being denied on an ex-parte application.

“If that is what the minister and the prime minister were referring to, they are guilty of misleading as a judge in chambers could not be confused with three judges hearing a constitutional issue,” Jackson said.

Jackson charged that, “the unconstitutionality claim was raised as a legal smokescreen to excuse the irresponsibility of the government in disrupting the information flow between Jamaica and its international security partners, which has caused a deterioration in the nation’s security situation and angered our long-standing important partners in the fight against transnational crime, particularly the narcotics trade”.

“Whereas the party welcomed the signing of the new arrangements, the three-year disruption has caused serious setbacks in Jamaica’s crime fighting and in particular, the disruption of the flow of guns and drugs and the apprehension of drug dealers, as was the case after the first MOU came into being in the early 2000s. It is the proceeds from transnational criminal activities that finance the organised gangs in Jamaica,” the Opposition spokesman added.

He said the PNP expects a full explanation and withdrawal of the misleading statements and assurances of no such repetition.