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Just leave it to the President of the Jamaica Senate and he will quite often make an ass of himself.

Tom Tavares Finson’s latest act of idiocy is the open condemnation of the Integrity Commission over its decision not to include his sentiments in a newspaper supplement last week.

According to the out-of-place Senate President, the commission sought to ‘gag’ him for not publishing the piece.

Wow! Look how many journalists in this island Tavares Finson’s own Government has tried to gag, some even complaining bitterly to media owners to have them shut up. 

Now, this is an indication of how it feels, although, on the surface, it appears that the veteran lawyer’s claim is unfounded, with the commission citing potential defamation (libel) as the reason for not publishing his message meant to mark International Anti-Corruption Day.

So, the Senate President used his massive power to read the so-styled gagged article in the Upper House, a demonstration itself that there was no such ‘gag’ at all, while soon after gagging Opposition Senator Peter Bunting from responding to his utterances.

Among the things that Tavares-Finson said about the Integrity Commission that was intended to be published was that “it would be a significant boost to the perceived fairness and the anti-corruption fight in Jamaica, should the current composition of the Integrity Commission re-reconstructed.” You see the drift? It is public knowledge that the seven-year tenure of some members and officials of the commission expires next year, starting as early as February. Based upon the mutterings of Tavares-Finson, it would be ideal for the members to be replaced, and obviously, others who will push the party line of his Government, should be appointed by the Governor General. If Tavares-Finson were to have his way, it seems, then maybe the GG ought to appoint retired Jamaica Labour Party people like my friend and brother Pearnel Charles Sr, or ask Desmond McKenzie and JC Hutchinson to go into overdue retirement and make them sit on the Integrity Commission either at the level of the board, or day-to-day officials. 

Tavares-Finson’s view that “it is disappointing that the Integrity Commission in its current dispensation is perceived across major sections of the Jamaican society as having lost credibility” is, like US Governor Tim Walz would say, ‘weird’.

When did Tavares-Finson survey ‘major sections of the Jamaican society’ to make such a determination? In my travels across Jamaica, and I would hasten to suggest that I comb the island far more often than the Senate President, the sentiments that I hear expressed by a vast number of people is opposite to what Tavares-Finson has said. Many people continue to hail the Integrity Commission as a beacon of hope to a society that has lost its way as far as manipulation of the political process that leads to State corruption is concerned.

Tavares-Finson even blames the Integrity Commission for the “slow rate” at which issues were being handled, but does he really realise that the Integrity Commission moves at what appears to be almost 1,000 times faster than how cases in the courts proceed, many of which he has a hand in?

Instead of continuing his attacks on one of the last remaining structures of fairness and decency, Tavares-Finson and his supporting tongues should be patting the members and officers on the collective shoulder for trying to save Jamaica from those who would want to bring this great country down.

By, for example, looking the prime minister in the eye and saying to him, ‘PM, it nuh look good for there to be discrepancies in your statutory declarations for so many years’, Tavares-Finson would have started the journey to allaying so many fears that continue to climb. 

And while he is at it, Tavares-Finson could also raise another matter in the Senate about the general conduct of some Jamaica Labour Party misfits like Everald Warmington and Juliet Cuthbert Flynn for quite often condemning Mark Golding, who could pass for Tavares-Finson’s brother, based upon similar skin pigmentation. The colour of one’s skin, Tavares-Finson ought to know, does not fit into the nation’s motto of ‘Out Of Many, One People.

Heat Getting to Holness 

And on the subject of the Prime Minister, Andrew Holness just does not get it. 

He believes that by the Integrity Commission’s disclosure in Parliament last week about his prior link to a company behind the construction of townhouses in the posh Beverly Hills community of St Andrew Eastern he is being ‘targeted’ by the commission.

This follows several instances of his falling short of Integrity Commission stipulations in respect of his annual statutory declarations and related matters.

The prime minister obviously does not realise what it is to be the policy head of this country. There is something that we the people over age 40 grew up on, and that is the saying ‘The higher the monkey climb…’

That is why too, the spotlight is more on the Government and the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, than any Opposition party. The Government runs things…the Opposition does not. As such, the camera of accountability will, at most times, be focused in the direction of whoever is in charge.

As far as the in-spotlight development in Beverly Hills goes, the clear question is not only as it relates to who owns or runs the property. It is about whether or not there were glaring breaches from the originally approved two-bedroom structures to four-bedroom ones. There is truth to that. While variations are allowed in some cases, that seems to be something completely different from what was approved.

Double standards cannot continue. Remember the furore that centred on President of the National Water Commission Mark Barnett and his wife over the housing project that they and others undertook in Barbican? Were they targeted?

Wasted money on Marisa Dalrymple Philibert election

A judgement in court last week underlined the foolishness that often happens in politics, highlighting the fact that Jamaica is going nowhere progressively.

After allegedly making false statements in her statutory declarations to the Integrity Commission between 2015 and 2021, which recommended that she should be charged with eight criminal offences, Marisa Dalrymple Philibert, of all persons, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, quit as Speaker and Member of Parliament in 2023, and miraculously opted to re-enter elective politics less than a month ago, despite having an uncleared matter before the court, telling the Judiciary, one of the three arms of Government, in a back-handed way that there has no respect for it.

Last week though, Parish Judge Leighton Morris denied an application by her defence lawyers to dismiss the case. Instead, trial will begin in March of 2025. Now, what if she is found guilty, although, I must say, that such people are not usually afforded that kind of ‘luxury’?

So, the prime minister goes ahead of the court matter by announcing a by-election in the seat vacated by Dalrymple Philibert, which, according to the Electoral Office of Jamaica, cost $30 million. Was it worth it?

KC’s fitting victory

As Kingston College, one of Jamaica’s foremost institutions of secondary learning, moves into celebration mode, what with its centenary next year, it is hard for even those who hate the school for no reason, to ignore its achievements. 

There ought to be a broader article on the overall gains by the institution, but as the warming up process intensifies to the anniversary of which the ‘college’ was founded, April 16, it is good to see that the Manning Cup and Olivier Shield football titles, as well as the Under 14 crown, were won by KC in the space of a week. Awesome!

Apart from being schooled at KC, and having a son who also attended the institution, history has recorded that my now-deceased uncle, Frank, who went on to work in Jamaica’s sugar industry, was in the first batch of four students to step through the gate when it opened in 1925. He was not the first boy past the post, and there is a debate as to whether or not he was second or third to walk past the founding headmaster Bishop Percival Gibson on his way to a classroom, but one thing is sure, the school that was essentially started to, hitherto, provide sound education to largely underprivileged boys at the height of colonialism, has fulfilled its mandate.