EDITORIAL - Good first step, Mr Prime Minister

As he acknowledged, Prime Minister Bruce Golding's apology to Jamaicans Monday night for his behaviour in the Christopher Coke extradition affair represents a good first, and tentative, step towards regaining the trust of the Jamaican people. That, he must know, will be a difficult uphill task.

What is particularly significant about this whole episode is that Mr Golding put Jamaica through nine months of angst, during which he severely tested Jamaica's relationship with one of its closest friends and threatened the country's political, social and economic stability, to arrive at a position that was so obvious in the first place. And he appears to have done that in the face of advice of the legal uncertainty upon which he founded his position.

When Jamaica declined America's request to extradite Mr Coke for alleged drug smuggling and gunrunning, it was purportedly on the grounds that the United States (US) had breached the extradition treaty by basing its request on information that was improperly transferred to it by the Jamaican police, which would not stand up in the Jamaican courts. Mr Golding has now disclosed that constitutional lawyer Dr Lloyd Barnett had advised the Government that the issues involved "were not sufficiently settled in law" and, therefore, should be tested in court.

That could have been done - as is now likely to be the case given the Government's decision to sign the extradition order - by Mr Coke himself, saving the administration from the widely held position, as Mr Golding said, that "the Government's position was politically contrived", given Mr Coke's connection with the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the PM's West Kingston constituency.

The PM's attitude to the extradition matter was compounded by the lengths the JLP appeared willing to go, ostensibly in an attempt to resolve a dispute between Jamaica and the US, but from which Mr Coke would have been the primary beneficiary. Mr Golding sanctioned the hiring of lobbyists by the JLP, then feigned ignorance of the development and has, up to now, not said who exceeded his instructions or paid Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.

This is a matter that is still to be resolved and an important element of accountability in Mr Golding's process of atonement.

Second chance

Having squandered much of the personal goodwill with which he came to office, Mr Golding has asked Jamaicans for a second chance, promising to re-assemble the bar that he initially set for himself, yet which he so palpably declined to negotiate.

This newspaper, as the prime minister and his party must understand, has, at this point, no basis to endorse Mr Golding's appeal for support. His behaviour in the Coke affair was egregious. It is for the prime minister to re-earn ours, and the people's, trust.

In that regard, Mr Golding must quickly move beyond the declarations of intent of Monday night's mea culpa to real implementation of the agenda he placed before the Jamaican people. Two of these are particularly urgent.

First is the work of recalibrating the Jamaican economy, including trimming the public sector to create a more efficient and affordable bureaucracy that now contributes much to the country's perennial fiscal deficit.

Just as important is the promise to break the nexus between criminality and politics and to dismantle the so-called political garrisons. Perhaps Mr Golding is unaware of it, but what these last nine months have been about is the capture of his government behind the ramparts of one of these garrisons.

If he has personally escaped, Mr Golding could yet help to free Jamaica.

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