Editorial | Warmington on the ECJ

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ recent appointment of Everald Warmington as one of the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) two members of the Electoral Commission of the Jamaica (ECJ) has evoked questions about the prime minister’s strategic intent and policy signal.

This month’s personnel changes at the ECJ, including Opposition leader Mark Golding, naming Maureen Webber as one his party’s representatives on the body, also reminds of one of the functions of the ECJ – other than the organisation and management of elections – and its failure, so far, to report on how it has handled that job. Which is, its role as political ombudsman.

It reminds, too, that the candidates in last September general election should already have filed their individual election funding raising and spending reports, and the requirement for the parties to do so by early April, or 180 days after the poll.

There must be early publication of these declarations, which, hopefully, will be a catalyst to renewed debate on greater transparency for political party and election financing. What, for most people, makes Mr Warmington’s appointment as an ECJ commissioner discomfiting and confounding is his long history of crudeness and incivility and his seeming antipathy to Parliament’s convention of accepting the recommendations of the ECJ, for the framing of legislation, on electoral issues. He was also a virulent opponent of the political ombudsman when it was a stand-alone body.

Indeed, on many occasions, over several years, Mr Warmington has made crude and offensive comments against a wide range of people, including journalists and fellow MPs. He also trained racial slurs against Mr Golding, calling a white Jamaican.

WITHHOLD PUBLIC FUNDS

After the 2024 municipal elections, when he was a minister, Mr Warmington even threatened to withhold public funds from an opposition People’s National Party (PNP) candidate who won a local government divisional seat in his parliamentary constituency.

Mr Warmington lost his government job over that incident – which gained the scrutiny of the ECJ/political ombudsman – but he remained influential in his party. Indeed, Mr Warmington’s many infractions have been overlooked, or, at worst, he received mild rebukes – of the kind that “Everard Warmington is Everard Warmington”.

Against that backdrop there have been, not unreasonably, questions and concerns of what to expect of Mr Warmington as an ECJ commission, and why he has been sent there. While he can’t derail the functioning of the ECJ his personality could make him a disruptive force.

The ECJ has nine commissioners: two each nominated by the prime minister and the Opposition leader (who effectively represent their parties); four independent members appointed in his right by the governor general; and the director of elections; who is appointed by the commission. Majority decisions are binding at its meetings.

Over more than four decades the ECJ and its predecessor, the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC) transformed Jamaica’s often violence-plagued election system to one that enjoys global respect and narrow outcomes have been accepted. That, in part, has been for the fact that the management of elections are no longer in the hands of the government and with ‘independent’ members in the majority on the ECJ, the parties can’t easily manipulate electoral processes to their narrow interests.

UNDERPINNING

An important underpinning of this is that when the ECJ’s recommendations reach Parliament they have been accepted and passed on a bi-partisan basis. On several occasions, Mr Warmington has questioned this approach, insisting that it undermined the authority of the legislature.

Everald Warmington is still a member of parliament. It will be of interest, if the situation arises, to note his attitude to legislation that reaches the House on the basis of the work of the ECJ, of which he is a commissioner.

It is also with more than mild curiosity that there is interest in Mr Warmington’s likely approach to his position as being a key bit of a reconstituted ombudsman, an office that polices the behaviour and conduct of politicians, political parties and their supporters, especially during campaigns. The ombudsman is one of the institutions that, like the ECJ, grew out of the political turmoil of the 1970s and ’80s, although their emphasis was different. The ECJ was responsible for the technical management of elections; the political ombudsman was concerned with the ethical and moral aspects of the process.

Mr Warmington was among those who campaigned for the abolition of the ombudsman’s office, claiming that it outlived its usefulness, before it was 2024 (wrongly this newspaper believes) rolled into the ECJ. The commissioners now, collectively, are the ombudsman.

In the past, Mr Warmington was vehement against state funding of political parties, and if he supported public disclosure of party and election funders, he was lukewarm. These disclosure arrangements remain opaque with myriad loopholes.

We hope that from inside the ECJ, Mr Warmington will have another perspective.