Editorial | Ombudsman’s verdict

Perhaps it’s a case of the maxim that no news is good news. Which, of course, is not always that case.

That is why The Gleaner expects from the Office of the Political Ombudsman a full report and analysis of its activities during the recent general election and whether it believes the current configuration is the most efficacious for such a body.

The ombudsman is under no legal obligation to produce a special post-election report. However, the peculiarities of the institution in its current iteration, and the controversy that this ignited, suggest that it is in the public interest that there should be transparency in this matter.

Indeed, it is already over a month since Jamaica voted in the general election with the new-style Political Ombudsman in place and nearly two years since they cast ballots in municipal elections with the revised structure. Yet the public has had no full, or transparent, analysis by the organisation of its work.

It is not too early to insist that this be made available, without having to await ministerial fancy as to when statutory annual reports are tabled in Parliament. The Political Ombudsman has the power to speak about its work at any time.

For clarity, the Office of the Political Ombudsman consists of nine people, who are otherwise, or in different skins, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ). Four of those people (two each) represent the island’s two major political parties – the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). Four others are the so-called independent members appointed by the governor general on his accord. Then there is the director of elections who runs the technical operation of the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ).

CRITICAL INSTITUTIONS

The ECJ and the Political Ombudsman were two critical institutions that evolved out of Jamaica’s ideological divisive and politically dysfunctional period of the 1970s and ’80s when election campaigns were liable to be violent and voting marred by irregularities.

The voting bit was fixed by the parties agreeing to take the management of elections out of the hands of the government and give it to an independent body that is now called the ECJ.

Over the past 45 years, under the ECJ and its predecessor, the Jamaican elections have grown from problematic to probably the gold standard in the Caribbean.

The Political Ombudsman, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the ethical and moral behaviour of political parties and their candidates, especially during election campaigns.

More specifically, the Political Ombudsman polices a code of political conduct which commits political parties, their candidates and supporters, to refrain from language and behaviour that encourages intimidation or violence against opponents.

The Political Ombudsman – either on its own account, or because of external complaints – has quasi-judicial powers to conduct investigation of apparent breaches of the code of conduct or other actions by political operatives that might lead to violence or cause conflicts with opponents.

While the Political Ombudsman can recommend corrective action, it doesn’t have the power to impose sanctions against people ruled to be in breach of the code. Its power is in its ability to name and shame.

When the tenure of the last stand-alone Political Ombudsman, Donna Parchment Brown, expired in November 2022, the administration of Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness did not propose the appointment of a replacement.

PAPER TIGER

Some government and ruling party officials argued that the office had outgrown its usefulness, or branded it a paper tiger.

The position remained vacant until the eve of the February 2024 municipal elections when the law was changed to subsume the Political Ombudsman into the ECJ.

Under the amendment, the nine ECJ members became, “indivisibly”, the Political Ombudsman. Notably, the Political Ombudsman was given no new powers to enforce its rulings, despite that weakness being among the arguments for change.

There were public accusations of what amounted to breaches of the political code of conduct by the two major parties during the campaign for the municipal elections and on voting day. The Political Ombudsman did not need formal complaints to investigate and pronounce on those or other claims.

The ECJ/Political Ombudsman may have needed time to find its feet and put in place the structures to fulfil its obligations. It has had enough time to do so.

Months before the September 3 election, the ECJ announced a process for filing complaints. An assigned point person even suggested that she was doing field work to acquaint herself with complaints.

Perhaps investigated issues have been resolved, in which event it has been a well-kept secret and antithetical to the role of the Ombudsman.

Given the different context of the two institutions, this newspaper continues to hold that it was an error to orphan the Political Ombudsman in the ECJ.

The mechanism for the Political Ombudsman to resolve issues is now unnecessarily complex and the concept philosophically wrong. Indeed, consideration of every issue will likely start in political discord among the arbiters, with the representatives of either party hewing closely to the arguments of their own side, rather than being led by the facts.

We feel there should be a return to a stand-alone ombudsman. We would, however, still like to hear the ECJ’s verdict on the experiment.