Opposition Senators on Friday ripped into the Government, accusing the Andrew Holness-led Administration of “normalising bad governance practices”.
The accusations were levelled in the Upper House as the Senate debated and passed the Political Ombudsman (Amendment) Act, 2024 that essentially subsumes the roles and functions of the Office of Political Ombudsman (OPO), into the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ).
“We see it (bad governance) at the street level; we saw just a few days ago the prime minister on a political campaign tour accompanied by two police pick-ups full of JLP-clad supporters,” Bunting said during the debate on the motion to suspend the Standing Orders to facilitate the debate on the Bill.
Bunting lamented that police vehicles were available to transport JLP supporters touring with Holness, “but there’s not a single working police vehicle at the Alligator Pond Police Station”.
He noted that the Alligator Pond station covers a large area from Gutters to Junction, to Gutts River.
Taking a swipe at the police, Bunting pointed out that days after the vehicles were used to transport supporters of a political party, “We haven’t heard any statement from the police high command asking the public to desist from that type of behaviour.
“So what we’re going to have, we’re going to have the normalisation of this now; we can expect the continued politicisation of the Jamaica Constabulary Force,” he said.
Bunting added: “We’re seeing the normalisation of the packing of public service positions with political activists who are unqualified for the role that they’re being asked to play…bad governance.
“We’re seeing, just last year, the ramming through of a Bill amending the constitution to extend the [term] of the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] in office without consultation…bad governance,” he said.
Bunting, a former national security minister, pointed out that with the local government election just over two weeks away, “there is no way that regulations, administrative arrangements etc, can be put in place for the ECJ to effectively replace the role of the ombudsman, no way.
“This is just public relations and it is further normalising bad governance”.
He told government senators that if they proceeded to debate and pass the bill, “what they would be supporting is incompetence, they would be demonstrating that they support undermining the best traditions of good governance, that they have contempt for this Senate and for the people of Jamaica who’re speaking out broadly against this compromising of the role of the ECJ”.
“Most seriously, they’re demonstrating that they totally disregard the precious reputation that this institution has developed on a convention of bipartisanship over many, many decades,” Bunting added.
Meanwhile, in her contribution to the debate, Opposition Senator Donna Scott-Mottley disagreed with the assertion by her government counterpart, Senator Kavan Gayle, that passage of the OPO Bill represented “good governance” on the part of the Administration.
Scott-Mottley reminded Gayle that the country had been without a political ombudsman for more than a year, yet the government was only taking a Bill to the Senate floor the day after Nomination Day for the local government election.
“Is that good governance?” she asked Gayle rhetorically.
Scott-Mottley argued that with the country knowing that the election had to be held before the end of the month, any government that understands good governance would have taken the opportunity to plan for this possibility.
“What instead that they have done is to rush, as usual, just a few days before an election is going to be announced, to table and take a bill. Is that good governance?”
The bill was piloted by government Senator Aubyn Hill, who said that having the ECJ assume the responsibilities of the political ombudsman was in the nation’s interest.
He said the government believes that there is greater benefit from having the ECJ, with nine individuals drawn from different segments of the society, applying their varied skills to the conduct of the work of the Office of the Political Ombudsman versus the retention of a single person in the office.
Opposition members, like their colleagues in the House of Representatives, were upset that the Bill was tabled, debated and passed the same day.
It was approved after a lengthy debate and two divided votes having gained passage in the House of Representatives on Tuesday where Opposition members also voiced strong objections. On Friday, the vote to approve the legislation was along strict party lines with the eight government senators voting ‘yes’ and the six Opposition members present voting ‘no’.
The Office of Political Ombudsman has been non-functioning since November 2022 when the seven-year term of the then ombudsman, Donna Parchment Brown, expired.
