Former Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), Professor Errol Miller, is calling for the Act that integrated the Office of the Political Ombudsman (OPO) within the ECJ ahead of the February 26 Local Government Election, to be repealed.
The House of Representatives, on Tuesday February 6, passed the Political Ombudsman (Amendment) Act, 2024, which provide for the Office of the Political Ombudsman to be integrated into the ECJ.
“I hope that good sense will prevail and both the Government and the Opposition will go back to Parliament and rescind, repent and make the Local Government Election of February 2024 the only election that is conducted on this foolishness,” said Miller.
The Government used its majority in the House of Representatives to pass the controversial legislation that sees the functions of the Office of Political Ombudsman being subsumed within the ECJ.
In a divide vote, 21 Government members voted ‘yes’ to ensure that the Political Ombudsman (Amendment) Act, 2024, piloted by Justice Minister Delroy Chuck, was approved. Seven Opposition members voted ‘no’.
The Government pushed through the Bill despite strong objections from the Opposition and a warning a week earlier by former Government Minister Karl Samuda for the Holness Administration not to tinker with the ECJ.
“It is disgraceful,” declared a vociferous Opposition Leader Mark Golding then, adding that it was “a bad idea” that won’t find favour with Jamaicans.
While speaking at the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) 2024 Education Conference in Trelawny last week, Miller, a former JTA president, said while the Opposition opposed the move at the time, they did not do so on the agreed 1979 convention that a party should not use its majority to pass any law affecting an electoral matter.
“They were opposing it not for the principal reason that it should be opposed,” said Miller.
