KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Eastern, Dr Dayton Campbell, has suggested that the Executive is “overrunning” the legislature in the current make-up of the Jamaican Parliament.

Campbell stated his position during Tuesday’s debate in the House of Representatives on a motion to name members to the sessional committees.

The motion was moved by Leader of Government Business in the House, Floyd Green, who also announced the names of the chairmen of the committees which the Opposition asserted is against the Standing Orders governing the running of the Parliament.

Leader of Opposition Business in the House, Phillip Paulwell, told Green that according to the Standing Orders, the chairmen are selected by committee members at the first sitting of the respective committees.

Among other things, the Opposition argued that the Government risked blurring the lines of the separation of powers doctrine, resulting in less transparency and accountability. But Campbell pursued a different line of argument than that of his Opposition colleagues during his contribution to the debate.

He noted that Jamaica inherited the Westminster model of government from the British and cautioned that, “When you inherit something, you have to understand that you may not be able to use it in its entirety and there’s some modification that is required because what obtains in the jurisdiction that you inherited it from may be a little bit different here.”

Campbell highlighted that, unlike in the United Kingdom (UK), which has 650 MPs, Jamaica with just 63 MPs, has a relatively small Parliament. He pointed out that in the UK, for a party to be elected to govern, it must win 326 seats.

“But they only have about 120 ministers of government, therefore the legislature is not overrun by the Executive as is the case here [in Jamaica] because we only have 63 [MPs] and for a party to win they need to get 32.

“What has happened in this particular instance is that majority of the members of the Government side have been appointed to the Executive, only leaving five of them on the back benches,” said Campbell.

“That overrun of the legislature by the Executive is what is at the root of this problem,” he insisted.

The naming of the chairmen of the sessional committees has been a contentious issue since 2020, when Prime Minister Andrew Holness broke with convention and appointed Government members to chair most of the sessional committees. The exceptions were the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee which will again be chaired by the Opposition this time around.

— Lynford Simpson