Golding: Revive impeachment legislation

Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding has suggested that lawmakers revisit the proposed impeachment law he attempted to introduce over 15 years ago, arguing that “the existing accountability framework needs to be strengthened”.

 He made the suggestion during an interview on New York City-based radio station Irie Jam with host Irwin Clare on Wednesday. It came days after his comments that Jamaican public officials do not “instinctively” embrace oversight and monitoring stirred wide public debate.

 In 2011, while Golding was head of Government, he tabled an impeachment bill in the House of Representatives that sought to establish a constitutional procedure to discipline, censure, or expel public officials, including lawmakers, who violated behavioural standards or committed serious wrongdoing.

 However, the bill was never debated and ultimately fell off the legislative agenda after his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration was voted out of office in the general election that same year.

 An expanded impeachment bill tabled by incumbent Opposition Leader Mark Golding in 2021 fell off the legislative agenda last September when the five-year parliamentary term ended.

 The former Jamaican prime minister was asked during the 43-minute radio interview to identify one reform that would most improve governance and accountability in Jamaica as well as restore public confidence.

 “When I was in office, I took to Parliament a bill to facilitate the impeachment of public officials. Not just elected officials like MPs (members of parliament), but people in the public service,” he responded.

 “I wasn’t able to get that passed, and although that was a commitment that [Prime Minister Dr] Andrew [Holness] had given, I think during the 2016 general election campaign, that still has not been done. So that’s one important thing,” Bruce Golding added.

 The former prime minister also doubled down on his comments that Jamaican public officials do not “instinctively” embrace oversight and monitoring.

 Noting that accountability can be “discomforting”, Bruce Golding, who spent over 50 years in the public service, said officials are constantly required to spend time filing reports and answering questions and acknowledged that “some of them consider this to be a nuisance”.

 “That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are thieving, you know. They may be doing their job and just figure that, you know, ‘I’ll be able to do my job so much better if a didn’t have to spend so much time answering these questions and accounting …’,” he said.

 But the former JLP leader insisted that “there is no alternative”.

 “The fact of the matter is we are not running our personal bank account. We are dealing with taxpayers’ money, and systems are put in place to ensure that taxpayers’ money is properly spent and properly reported on and accounted for,” he said.

 “It may cause discomfort, it may cause you to divert from other things that you want to do, but there is no alternative to that. We can’t just draw a cheque and sign it, but we don’t put no money on it and say, ‘Well, go and spend what you want and spend it however you want’.”

 He said public officials owe it to taxpayers to give them the assurance that “your money is being well-spent, and that’s what the accountability advocacy groups are seeking to achieve”.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com