KINGSTON, Jamaica — Government Senator Aubyn Hill did not hold back last Friday as he accused the Opposition of hypocrisy in calling for integrity from their Government counterparts while they had myriad scandals marring their time in power over a 23-year period.

He also chided the Opposition for its poor choice in recently selecting a twice-convicted felon as a candidate for the next parliamentary election.

Armed with a laundry list of transgressions allegedly committed by members of the People’s National Party (PNP), Senator Hill used a segment of his State of the Nation presentation in the Upper House to hold up a proverbial mirror to the Opposition to demonstrate that it does not have the morality to demand integrity from the Government.

“I have sat often in this chamber and I listen to members from across the aisle make repeated calls for us on this side to practice an outstandingly high level of perceived integrity. Those calls are repeated ad nauseam and often are out of context with the subject on the order paper that is being discussed in this chamber. I hear the same noises from other places and from other various PNP platforms with more mentions of required perceived integrity.

“Many of these boisterous calls are often accompanied by the shrill demands for some of us to step aside until their various and unsubstantiated allegations are investigated. What temerity they possess. This constant call, and sometimes the drum roll for the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) to practice perceived integrity and even for some of us to step aside, force me to go back and look at the record of the PNP,” he said.

Hill said that during the PNP’s extensive time in power, the party created a long and colourful record, filled with “scandals, very questionable integrity, lack of accountability of perpetrators of much more than allegations, and certainly no stepping aside of those who were believed to be or maybe clearly culpable”.

He argued that he was highlighting the various scandals “simply to remind those who indulge in rampant and shameful hypocrisy what are the facts about themselves they are forgetting or trying to cover up. In any event, we know that invariably, unfairly many would say, we of the JLP are held to a higher standard”.

Among the misdeeds he pointed to is the Montego Bay street people scandal of 1999 in which a group of more than 30 homeless Jamaicans were arbitrarily detained, tied with ropes, and forcibly taken in a government truck from Sam Sharpe Square to a deserted area 37 kilometres away near a toxic mud lake in St Elizabeth. City officials were implicated but no one was ever found to be criminally liable. The Government accepted responsibility and compensated the survivors with a monthly stipend of $20,000.

He also highlighted the Trafigura scandal of 2006 which revealed that the PNP had received more than 460,000 euros ($37 million) from Dutch oil company Trafigura that the then Government did business with. It is alleged that the money was used to help finance the PNP’s annual conference that year. Trafigura Beheer said the money was part of a commercial agreement, while the PNP maintained that it was a donation to the party.

“All of these PNP scandals are terrible, but this Trafigura scandal is particularly egregious and offensively smelly because what they tried to do is to ensure that the Jamaican people wouldn’t hear in an open court what the PNP was trying to do — to get the money and hide it,” he said.

Turning to the mid-90s collapse of the financial sector that led to the formation of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) to restore stability, Hill said this event was terrible because many people died.

Critics say that, instead of bringing stability, Finsac’s efforts led in large measure to a “fire sale” to overseas investors and many well-off Jamaicans were wiped out, losing their businesses, and in some cases their homes, which had been mortgaged as risk-taking entrepreneurs pushed to stay afloat.

Finsac sold US$23 million worth of non-performing loans to US-based Beal Bank which subsequently sold the debt to the Jamaica Redevelopment Foundation (JRF). This represented more than 24,000 loans, with the Government collecting between 15 and 50 per cent of the net proceeds recovered.
Hill expressed dismay that with these and other scandals the Opposition has the gall to speak to the Government about transparency, integrity and corruption. He also questioned the integrity of the Opposition in selecting Isat Buchanan, a twice-convicted felon, as an MP candidate.

“I was passing a television set on the date of the recent conference of the PNP and I looked at the platform… I looked till I tired, I couldn’t find one drop of integrity, not a drop of integrity upon the platform,” Hill said.

He said what he saw on that platform was a convicted criminal who later on, has been put forward to be a member of parliament. “…It’s not convicted for shoplifting or an egregious traffic offence [it’s] convicted for getting involved, processing and doing criminal stuff with schedule one drugs,” Hill quipped.

“I mean, you stand over there and tell us every week about integrity and transparency and how we should do this and who must step aside and you don’t call your leader aside — Marky British or Marky G, whichever one want to call him — and say ‘Look, you can’t put convicted criminals in this country and another country…to put up as MP to make laws. All Jamaicans must say this is unacceptable,” he added.