Events over the past few years involving governments in the Caribbean Community would seem to reflect an increasingly unwelcome and worrying trend in the region’s politics.
In Jamaica, lawyers representing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and other People’s National Party (PNP) officials are contesting a ruling which compels them to give witness statements, in open court, regarding the probe by Dutch authorities of a J$31 million (approximately US$475,000) “donation” to the PNP, in 2006, by the Dutch oil trading company, Trafigura. There is no doubt that the scandal was a contributory factor to the PNP’s loss in the 2007 general election but it has now come back to haunt Mrs Simpson Miller and the PNP, who ironically returned to power on the back of former Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s mishandling of the “Dudus” extradition.It is the legal right of Mrs Simpson Miller and her colleagues to seek to avoid giving evidence, but this action only serves to reinforce the perception that they have something to hide.
In the tiny Federation of St Kitts and Nevis, many Nevisians are upset about Kittitian control of their fortunes, especially with regard to the alleged lack of transparency surrounding the sale of real estate and geothermal assets on Nevis by the central government. This concern has not been helped by the controversy following the Nevis Island Assembly elections last year, when it was alleged that voters had been illegally purged from the electoral roll and emigrants were flown into Nevis to pad the vote. The latter practice is reportedly ‘normal’ among almost all the major parties in the small countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States but it is doubtful that it is in keeping with the spirit of free and fair elections. If not addressed, such irregularities could conceivably lead to outright fraud and the complete undermining of citizens’ confidence in democracy.
Farther down the island chain, in Grenada, Prime Minister Tillman Thomas last month requested the Governor-General to prorogue parliament to avoid facing a no-confidence motion against his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) filed by his own former foreign minister. The NDC has been in turmoil since its election in 2008 and, at its annual convention on Sunday, the party expelled its general secretary and former tourism minister, as well as several senior party members, including four other former ministers. Whilst the NDC is suffering the fallout from factional infighting and a move to topple Mr Thomas, this appears to reflect a wider dissatisfaction with the government, particularly as the prime minister and his finance minister refuse to say where the government is borrowing money from to deal with the country’s current fiscal crisis.
This newspaper has already commented on recent developments in Trinidad and Tobago where Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s People’s Partnership government appears to be buckling under the weight of expectations and several self-inflicted wounds, with the Section 34 controversy and its implications for the rule of law and good governance, the latest in a long line of political and public relations disasters.
In neighbouring Suriname, the government of former dictator and now legitimately elected President Desi Bouterse, convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for drug trafficking and facing trial in Suriname for the 1982 December murders, passed a law in April this year granting amnesty to all the suspects in the murder case, two months before the verdict was due.
Closer to home, the Linden tragedy and the copyright fiasco – though very different issues – would appear to reflect a cavalier attitude to the rule of law or a type of recklessness, and, moreover, to suggest that someone is asleep at the wheel.
In all of the above, there is a common thread – the idea that the law can be used, manipulated or ignored to suit political expediency. This, by itself, is profoundly worrying, but what is perhaps even more disturbing is the sense that politicians can demonstrate such disregard for public opinion and seemingly be so oblivious to the fact that the people, through the communications revolution, are nowadays better informed and better able to voice their displeasure. The inability of different governments across the region to envisage how their various statements and actions will be received, in turn, points to a basic inability to understand a fundamental benchmark of good governance: public approval.
What we are witnessing may well be suggestive of a crisis of governance. It is no wonder that Caricom has been deemed to be “in crisis” and that the regional integration project is virtually at a standstill. Poor governance practices and questionable leadership in domestic jurisdictions can only translate into failure at the regional level.
