Scott-Mottley questions reinstatement of Floyd Green to Cabinet
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Senator Donna Scott Mottley says she is disappointed with the way Floyd Green’s return to the Cabinet was handled by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
Green was named to Holness’ reshuffled Cabinet on Monday as Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister.
“There are several people in the Government who are well liked and admired on both sides, and I don’t take any issue with his return to the Cabinet. I believe that he was doing a very good job in the position he held, but what is concerning to me is how the issue has been handled,” Scott Mottley, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Business in the Senate, told Friday’s meeting of the Upper House.
Green resigned from the Cabinet on September 15 last year, just hours after a viral video showed him and other prominent members of the Jamaica Labour Party flossing and having a good time at a birthday celebration on a no-movement day. Green, who was the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries at the time, apologised for his actions.
But, Scott-Mottley noted that when the video of the hotel party surfaced, “a group of persons were making fun of those of us who were being obedient and keeping the law, and it was really a hurtful thing”.
The opposition senator said it could be compared with the current criticisms of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s partying during the omicron variant spread, where people were asking questions like, “you lay down the laws and then you break it?”
“What I would like is a society being built that works for all of us; that everybody feels that they are a part of what’s happing; that we don’t approach it, according to what party we support, whether we are opposition or government,” said Scott-Mottley.
She noted that there was also disquiet concerning the investigations into the event, and nothing has been heard about the matter since.
“It is as though it disappeared. Nobody has been charged. There is a waiting on the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) for a ruling,” she added. Scott-Mottley said that she was contrasting this with the arrest of two sisters, Racquel Williams and Kadean Nelson in St Thomas, who were fined some $200,000, or 30 days in jail, for failing to wear a mask.
A popular and well-liked politician, the 40-year-old Green is the former leader of the party’s professional wing, Generation 2000. Some political activists and ordinary folk have been calling for his reinstatement.
Their requests were acknowledged by Holness, who reassigned him to the Office of the Prime Minister at Jamaica House last Tuesday, in a reshuffled Cabinet.
Green will lead the way for the implementation of the National Identification System which will establish a reliable database of all Jamaican citizens and issue a unique lifelong National Identification Number to every person.
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