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 After Appeal Court ruling, Holness must decide his future

Now that the Court of Appeal has ruled on the latest in the series of attempts by Prime Minister Andrew Holness to wiggle his way out of a situation that continues to haunt him, he needs to come clean with the people of Jamaica in deciding his future as a politician.

The Court of Appeal last Friday agreed with Supreme Court judge Althea Jarrett in her ruling on July 31, 2025, which blocked the disclosure of files relevant to the legal matter between Holness and the Integrity Commission.

Holness’s legal team wanted the items, listed through an affidavit by the commission’s then director of Information, Craig Beresford, who is now executive director of the organisation. 

The prime minister’s lawyers claimed that, among other things, Beresford’s affidavit contained material that was “scandalous, frivolous, and vexatious.”

It was important that the Court of Appeal judges stated that Justice Jarrett never “misapprehended the evidence of the law.” The three-member panel of outstanding justices Marcia Dunbar Green, Frank Williams, and Frank Brown also stated that Justice Jarrett’s “reasoning reflects a proper exercise of discretion and is consistent with established principles governing evidential admissibility in judicial review proceedings.”

The ruling was read by Justice Paulette Williams.

At the centre of the entire drawn-out saga is the certifying of Holness’s financial declarations. It cannot be good for the leader of any country to, for years, be unable to have his declarations certified by the agency that was established under his rule.

The Integrity Commission had recommended in 2024 that Tax Administration Jamaica and the Financial Investigations Division have a look at the prime minister’s financials, but he has consistently found ways to stall the process.

You just cannot get comfortable with the leader of a country breaking the rules, while others are made to pay the penalty for their non-compliance.

It’s now back to the Supreme Court with the matter, unless Holness and his lawyers find something else to complain about. But the time has come. There are far too many questions for him to answer in his role of prime minister. Can you imagine if integrity commissions, or their namesakes in countries like England, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Australia, and Belgium had moved similarly, what the outcome would have been like? Surely, new heads of Government would have been in place.

FIFA head has done his time … he needs to go now

Giovanni ‘Gianni’ Infantino seems to be heading down the same route as his Swiss predecessor at FIFA, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, in dragging football into the deepest garbage disposal pit.

Infantino, 56, has been FIFA president since 2016 – a long 10 years; Blatter served in that capacity for 17 years, from 1998 to 2015, and before that, also for 17 years (1981 to 1998) as general secretary. 

Blatter, now 90, was fingered with corruption charges in 2015, but was cleared by Swiss courts twice, and remains a free man to the Swiss, but not to the global population.

I don’t know if it’s a thing about Switzerland, but in his latest act of idiocy, Infantino proposed that FIFA sell stakes in competitions to private investors. Essentially, a commercial arm of FIFA would be created to manage and run the organisation’s main events, which include the World Cup and World Club Championship.

With pressure mounting, the fool had to back off, but how long will it take for him to reemerge with something equally ridiculous, or even worse?

Let’s look a bit more at the failed proposal. Third parties, under the plan, would be invited to invest in that subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, which, according to Infantino, would increase the payout to member states.

Another wrong move the FIFA boss made next was to have unbuttoned his already tight shirt by disclosing that an American venture capital firm called Thrive, which is headed by Joshua Kushner, brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared, would be in charge.

That continued close association with Trump has cost Infantino so many stripes. And Trump even set him up with the disclosure of a request to rescind a decision to allow a red card, shown to American striker Folarin Balogun against Bosnia-Herzegovina in the just-ended World Cup, although he, Trump, did not know what a red card was all about.   

Infantino had even promised each national association US$40 million to back his proposal, which sounded like football prostitution, and unfortunately, there were emerging signs that one confederation that so many of us look up to: Africa, was giving it favourable consideration.

Even fresh British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Infantino was the wrong man for the job and called the suggestion “outrageous”. For one in his infancy as prime minister, having tried twice before for the job, unsuccessfully, Burnham is showing that he has balls from quite early. It’s clearly something that his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, would not have done.

The fact that some confederations, like Europe with 55 members, North, Central America and the Caribbean (Concacaf) 41, and Asia, 46, had hit out against the proposal meant that if it were taken to a vote, the idiotic plan would have been shut out by a majority of FIFA’s 211 member nations.

Infantino must, like some of the corrupt politicians that we have in Jamaica, spend a few hours before the mirror and then convince himself that now is the time to leave the scene before it is too late. Football deserves that.

Sir Garry’s funeral deserved higher representation from Jamaica

The man who has worn the crown for decades as the world’s finest all-round cricketer, Sir Garfield ‘Garry’ Sobers, was taken to his final resting place last Wednesday in Barbados, with fanfare and respect in an elaborate ceremony, spearheaded by the Barbados Government under its greatest prime minister, Mia Mottley.

It was a going home ceremony that was most fitting for the man who was more highly rated and respected than any other individual who played the game.

Jamaica was officially represented at the funeral service by Senator Abka Fitz-Henley, who serves as minister of state in the Office of the Prime Minister. However, while it was not bad that a Jamaican Government official was in the house, it warranted someone who held a higher office, based upon the event’s importance. 

And, I will not get caught up with which minister of state – Fitz-Henley, or Kerensia Morrison from the ministry with responsibility for sport – should have attended. In this instance, no lower than the prime minister himself should have been that rep. 

It’s not a comparison, but while Holness found time to attend the World Cup 2026 final in the United States last month, he could have pushed back some other issues in order to be at the funeral of the Barbadian national hero, who did so much for the Caribbean as a whole, from the time he started playing cricket for the regional team in 1954, to his last day above ground.

I’m even sure that had Holness turned up for Sir Garry’s funeral service, he would have been allowed to speak on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans who worshipped the late hero over the years.

Had something like this happened in the days of Michael Manley and P J Patterson as prime ministers, men who loved cricket more than those who played it, they would have travelled to Barbados for the event.

It was also a missed opportunity for the hierarchy of the Opposition People’s National Party not to have had an official presence there, knowing not only what Sir Garry meant to Caribbean development, but also the close ties that Mottley and the Barbados Labour Party enjoy with the PNP.

I am aware that Opposition Leader Mark Golding was on a pre-planned trip overseas, but maybe the party’s spokesman on sport, and Member of Parliament for Clarendon Northern, Wavell Hinds, could have been selected to attend. 

Former cricketer Hinds, who is also president of the West Indies Players Association, which was represented at the funeral, was also deeply admired by Sir Garry, and received warm words from the great man when Hinds scored the first of his five Test centuries – a blistering, stroke-filled 165 – batting at number three during the second Test against Pakistan at Kensington Oval in May 2000. The Pakistan team included powerhouse fast bowlers Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, as well as world-class spinners Mushtaq Ahmed and Saqlain Mushtaq.  

Fellow Jamaican Courtney Walsh took five wickets in Pakistan’s first innings, while man-of-the-match Hinds also scored 52 in the second innings of the drawn encounter.

Fresh water storage, and desalination

In 2019, then minister with responsibility for water, Pearnel Charles Jr told me in an interview published by the Jamaica Observer that the Administration of the day, led by Andrew Holness, was fully looking into the possibility of using desalinated water, a process of removing salt from sea water to make it potable, and ease Jamaica’s perennial water shortage.

The story was echoed by sitting Minister of Water, Matthew Samuda in 2023. We are now closer to 2027, and desalination has not even made it to discussions around dinner tables.

So, the politicians continue to talk, usually about how the country should continue its primitive acts of water lockoffs, storing water here, there, and everywhere, and clamping down on activities such as washing vehicles and watering lawns.

Charles Jr at the time, was seeking quotations from potential builders, although one political representative of a certain powerful country had told him, in a clear act of intimidation, that it would be advisable that any construction of such a plant should be undertaken by specialists from his country.

If Jamaica could just increase its storage of fresh water, though, by constructing more dams, the island would be well on its way to setting the introduction of desalinated water aside.