Panton brings own water to Parliament’s ICOC Meeting

Chairman of the Integrity Commission (IC), Seymour Panton, has questioned whether there was something in the water at the nation’s Parliament that caused some parliamentarians to make sometimes inflammatory statements against the commission and its commissioners.

Taking no chances, Panton brought his own water when he appeared Tuesday before the Parliament’s Integrity Commission Oversight Committee (ICOC).

He used the occasion to push back at reports that the commission was partisan and that it had malice towards the government.

“On the question of malice, I have been a lay preacher in the Methodist church for decades. Malice is not in my make-up and it is not in the make-up of the commissioners,” Panton declared.

The retired President of the Court of Appeal said: “there may be persons who need to repent. And they can join me at church...any Sunday”

Continuing, he said: “I don’t know if something is wrong with the water in Parliament why some people, the moment they get into Parliament they say certain things and behave a certain way, I don’t know if that is it”.

Panton elicited laughter when he reached for a bottle of water he had brought with him to the meeting, remarking that “as a result, I decided that I wasn’t going to take the chance of drinking any water here”.

He said he was serious when he told the Edmund Bartlett-chaired committee that he would be seeking a meeting with Government Senator, Dr Saphire Longmore, a consultant psychiatrist, “to have a word with her because it may well be that she needs to have a word with some members of the House”.

At a recent meeting of the ICOC, some government members were forceful in their demand/suggestion that the IC should be mandated to certify the statutory declarations of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

In a seeming response to those remarks, Panton said: “as it regards some other statements made in this room about giving orders, the commission takes orders from no one other than the court”.

He expressed the hope that the persons making those statements would desist from doing so.

The prime minister’s declarations for 2021 and 2022 remain uncertified and, after a year-long probe of the head of government for illicit enrichment, aspects of his business dealings have been referred to the Financial Investigations Division and Tax Administration Jamaica for further action. The prime minister has taken the matter to court.