Questionable Conduct: The Jamaican Political Reality

Major General (Ret.), then Permanent Secretary Ministry of National Security, Stewart E. Saunders gave his assessment of the Extradition Framework: "The steps to be taken when an Extradition Request is made must be clearly and unambiguously set out and must in no way shape, or, form be subjected to the intervention of the political directorate. This process should be treated solely as a judicial process to avoid any opportunity of the said political directorate determining its commencement or conclusion. In the matter before the Commission of Enquiry, the problems that occurred or, manifested themselves, did so because the Security Forces were prevented from carrying out their functions in 2009. This was the first time in our history of effecting such requests that there was political interference of the magnitude that was evident. Jamaica would have been spared the events of May 2010 had this not been so. It is, in my opinion, grossly irresponsible and a breach of loyalty ...

The alerting of Christopher "Dudus" Coke to the imminent extradition request by the United States has featured in two COE; firstly in the Manatt COE and now the Tivoli COE. Regrettably, not much light has been shed, even though Manatt COE generated much heat on the topic. The Tivoli COE  failed to further the investigation and therefore added nothing to the pool of information already in the public space. Garnett Roper writing in The Gleaner, Sunday, August 14, 2016 noted that there is no mechanism to hold those of the political class accountable for abuse of power, bad governance and "announcements that tipped off Coke so that Tivoli could be armed and barricaded and 300 gunmen recruited to declare war on the Jamaican state". The "tipping off" formed the basis of ToR (N) and ToR (O) and was disposed of in Chapter 12.[See our posts: Tivoli COE: Diddly Squat (1) and Tivoli COE: Diddly Squat (2) ] Nevertheless, there is a rather curious treatment of th...