Skip to main content

Tivoli COE: Diddly Squat (1)

Chapter 12 of the Report of the Western Kinston Commission of Enquiry is a complete waste of time and added nothing to the pool of information already in the public space. Simply put, it is "diddly squat".
Chapter 12 purports to address (i) the issue of any communication between any official of the GOJ and Christopher Coke during the period 24 August 2009 to June 2010; and (ii) matters concerning the search for and discovery of documents at Coke's offices by the security forces. See our post " Tivoli COE: Diddly Squat (2)"

                                    GOJ Officials Communicating with Coke

"12.15   On the evidence adduced to the Commission of Enquiry ,we find that there was no direct communication during the period 24 August 2009 and May 2010 between Christopher Coke and any official of the Government of Jamaica. The evidence of Coke being "tipped off" on 24 August 2009 after the Heads of the security forces informed the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Security of an imminent request for Coke's extradition, is not of a quality that could leads us to make any finding of communication between Coke and any official of the GOJ."(emphasis added)

Certain observations are unavoidable:

(a) The Commissioners have adopted a courtroom approach in a criminal trial in which the judge merely acts on the evidence adduced. Thus any inadequacy is placed directly on those charged with the responsibility of adducing the evidence, in this case Commission Counsel.

(b) There seems to be an overly pedantic approach. Obviously Coke was "tipped off".
Common sense  ( utilized by the Commissioners later ) leads one to conclude that it would be rather reckless for any official of the GOJ to be in direct communication with Coke. Hence surrogates would have been employed by both sides and coded messages utilized.

(c) There is evidence available from the Heads of the Security Forces that Coke was under "surveillance " and was being "monitored"for some two weeks before the period under investigation.

(d) In the absence of a belated confession from a GOJ official and traces of telephonic communication from the locales of the Ministry of National Security and Vale Royal around the material times, then this was an exercise in futility.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Appealing the By-Election Order

Abraham Dabdoub's appeal against the Chief Justice's ruling can be divided into two overlapping and intertwined phases: That the Chief Justice erred in law by failing to award the seat to the only duly nominated candidate on Nomination Day, August 7, 2007 in the constituency of West Portland; and That the Chief Justice erred in law by failing to recognize and properly apply the distinction between " status " and " conduct " in coming to her decision on disqualification based on dual citizenship. Numerous cases on votes being declared to be "thrown away" and the next candidate being duly seated by the court are cited. The detailed submissions are set out below: Publish at Scribd or explore others: Law

By-Election Predisposition

Introduction A massive amount of time and resources have been devoted to the issue of the course to be properly taken once a victorious electoral candidate has been found to be "disqualified" under S. 40 of the Constitution of Jamaica. Simply put, the crux of the matter is whether the second place candidate should, without more, be accorded the seat by the court; or that the said election be deemed null and void and a by-election ordered to decide the people's representative. This matter consumed inordinate amounts of energy - judicial and otherwise - due primarily to the silence of the Constitution on what recourse should be adopted in such circumstance. A cardinal tenet of democratic government is that the people must decide their representatives and not a select grouping - no matter their qualification or status. The Constitution of Jamaica fully recognized this imperative even though it expressly delegates the determination of questions as to membership of either Ho...