KINGSTON, Jamaica – President of the People’s National Party (PNP), Mark Golding, has pointed to what he says is a problem of holding people accountable for gender-based violence in the domestic setting in Jamaica because of certain factors at play.

According to Golding, these factors include the dynamics of relationships where violence sometimes becomes part of the relationship. He also cited that there are financial and other issues that may make people reluctant to leave abusive relationships “even though they are victims of a heinous crime”.

Golding was speaking Saturday as he addressed the 48

^th

 annual conference of the PNP Women’s Movement which saw Patricia Duncan Sutherland replace Jennifer Edwards as president. Edwards served in the top post for 15 years.

While arguing that the state must play an important role in addressing gender-based violence so that accountability is not undermined, Golding pointed to the matter involving independent member of parliament for Central Westmoreland, George Wright, who is suspected to be the man caught on a viral video that was circulated in April, raining blows on a woman with both his fists and a stool.

At the time of the incident which Wright has neither confirmed nor denied, he was the Jamaica Labour Party Member of Parliament for the constituency. He was quickly dropped from the JLP’s parliamentary caucus and shortly after resigned from the JLP. The police have indicated that they were forced to drop their probe into the matter because both Wright and the woman who was later identified as Tannisha Singh, Wright’s common-law wife, refused to give a formal statement to the police.

“He (Wright) has not denied that he is the person in that video and he has been expelled from his party or has resigned from his party and their caucus in the Parliament but that is all. He remains in Parliament and he will remain in Parliament for the rest of the duration of this Parliament unless he chooses to resign,” Golding pointed out.

“The whole question of how to hold parliamentarians accountable where it is clear that they have brought the Parliament into disrepute, or certainly the office of a parliamentarian into disrepute, is a live issue,” said Golding, who is also the Opposition leader.

He noted that he has tabled impeachment legislation in the Parliament “which would be designed to address situations like this”.

However, he lamented that he has been trying to get Prime Minister Andrew Holness “to agree and send it to a joint select committee because it is sufficiently fundamental and new that it ought to be subjected to that rigorous process and participatory legislative work”.

He added that “so far he (Holness) has been dragging his feet and I’m not sure exactly why but I’m still hopeful, I’m not giving up on that”.

Golding was speaking publicly for the first time since the PNP was rocked by the resignations of several senior members of the party on Friday as a years-long internal rift suddenly widened.