In Parliament today, Speaker of the House Juliet Holness tabled the long-awaited Attorney General’s legal opinions given to the Speaker and the former Speaker. The opinions were to do with the process for the tabling of reports submitted to the House by the Integrity Commission and the Auditor General. The Speaker said today that the tabling of these opinions should not be taken as a precedent regarding tabling of legal opinions given to the Speaker.
Without further comment, I share the opinions here.
July 10, 2023 – Attorney-General’s Chambers – Opinion Re Reports Submitted Under Section 36 of the Integrity Commission Act, and Standing Orders No. 73D
Bloganuary Day 3 prompt: What colleges have you attended?
I lived minutes walk away from University of the West Indies. I wanted to go to college further away. I went to college in a snowy place, near Boston, Massachusetts. Beside Lake Waban. The lamp posts reminded me of the one in “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.”
I ran out of steam today. A more substantial response tomorrow. Hopefully….
Bloganuary Day 2 prompt: Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
I enjoy taking photos, just for fun! I am a happy amateur. I get lost looking through my camera lens, enjoy focusing on what is within the frame, love scrolling through the pictures later on and am delighted when something turns out well. For me, it’s playtime and mindfulness combined.
I didn’t take the picture below. My son did. I didn’t know that he had taken it, until he shared it later. It’s me on my roof, taking photos of the first sunset for 2024. My roof is one of my favourite places to be…flat, grey, boring, concrete slab…which gives me a magnificent view of nature around me!
(Bloganuary is a WordPress blogging challenge, that I’ve decided to participate in. Daily prompts for the month of January. I’ll see how far I make it….)
Growing up I hated Sunday evenings. I have said so on my blog before. The weekend was practically over. There would be school on Monday morning, and I often still had homework to finish.
Yes, there was often something entertaining to watch on TV…a variety show…Tom Jones or Englebert Humperdink…a BBC drama…The Forsyte Saga or War and Peace. Don’t laugh. JBC was the only TV channel here in those days. No hundred different channels, no Netflix, no YouTube. My father would buy ice cream or pastries on a Sunday, and we would have those while watching TV together. So Sunday evenings weren’t all bad, but still…
Half a century later and Sunday evenings still aren’t my favourite time of the week. I prefer Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings, when there are still hours and hours before the weekend ends. There remains a buffer between the slower pace of the weekend and the Monday to Friday busy-ness.
I like the slow unwinding that can happen on a weekend day, more likely on a Sunday for me, like today. Waking up early, but being able to stay in bed. With a cup of fresh fevergrass tea, sweetened with honey from bees in the Blue Mountains. Reading the current book. Falling asleep again. Time for meditation, unhurried yoga, time to write. A stretched out breakfast…a piece of pawpaw…some callaloo and saltfish…another cup of tea…. The hours roll by and morning turns into afternoon turns into evening and the dogs have been fed and the sky has chosen its colours and lines for this particular sunset. Heavy on the greys, some pinks and oranges, above the ever present line of the hills.
I think back over today and realise it was a perfect day. Those days come in many different formats, some of them marked by very special moments. Some of them quite ordinary. And this was one of them. Give thanks!
Concerns have been and continue to be expressed about the Constitutional Reform Committee which was established last month. Some of those concerns include what access the Jamaican public will have to the workings of the Committee, via the broadcasting of its meetings and the publication of its minutes, for example. The level and type of public consultation that will take place is also being questioned, particularly as the Minister of Legal & Constitutional Affairs who is co-chair of the Committee, Minister Malahoo-Forte, has said that she plans to table the draft Bill in Parliament next month – in May.
Last week Wednesday (April 19, 2023), the TVJ programme All Angles focused on aspects of the Constitutional Reform Committee and its work. Host Dionne Jackson Miller had as panelists on the programme Minister Malahoo-Forte and Senator Scott-Mottley, a member of the Committee. (Carol Narcisse was also to join the discussion by Zoom, but because of technical difficulties affecting the sound was unable to.)
At one point in the discussion Senator Scott-Mottley referred to a large volume of background documents provided to members of the Committee & on Twitter I suggested that those documents could be shared online with the public.
Along the same lines, earlier this month I had wondered whether the minutes of the Committee meetings would be made public. I am certainly not the only person thinking this should be done.
Last week Thursday (April 20, 2023), I made the following two Access to Information requests to the Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs:
For copies of the background documents mentioned by Senator Scott-Mottley that had been provided to members of the Constitutional committee
For copies of the minutes of all meetings held to date by the Constitutional Reform Committee established in 2023.
On Sunday (April 23, 2023), I received an email response from the Ministry, providing 27 documents –
“See below background documents which were provided to the members of the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC)…”
– as well as a copy of the Terms of Reference of the Committee.
I also received the following commitment – “Please note that the Minutes are being reviewed and will be shared after they have been confirmed.”
No timeline was given for this, however, so I will wait to see when they are provided and whether there are any redactions.
(As an aside, I must say that this is one of the quickest ATI responses I have ever received.)
I am not seeing the Committee’s background documents posted on the Ministry’s website, which would really be a good idea. In the meantime, I have posted them below and have grouped them for convenience.
In a recent discussion with Dionne Jackson Miller on Beyond the Headlines on RJR (January 24, 2023), Dr Barbara Carby made some comments that have stayed with me. Dr Carby is a disaster mitigation and sustainable development expert and a former head of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management (ODPEM). Ms Jackson Miller was discussing the problem of substandard building blocks, which had been highlighted in a Gleaner article by Jovan Johnson published on December 25, 2022 – Poor-quality building blocks: High percentage of substandard products on the market a “public safety” concern.
About the substandard building blocks, Dr Carby had this to say:
“I view this matter very seriously and I’ll tell you perhaps my major concern. We’re talking about building blocks, right? We are not properly regulating the sector. We’re not doing appropriate monitoring and enforcement. So that’s one element of the whole building and construction. But here is the issue. We are failing at other spots along the continuum as well. So we don’t enforce and monitor where people put what kind of building. Hence we have buildings on steep slopes, faulted areas, gully banks and all of that. So we’re not doing that. Then certainly for the informal sector, as we call it, we don’t actually monitor the quality of the construction. So the person could be using substandard blocks; they could be using a substandard concrete mix to fill the blocks. They could be putting steel in all the wrong places and at the wrong intervals to then confer some sort of earthquake resistance on the building. So you see it’s a series of things going on which, at the end, all could add up to a major disaster if we had an earthquake.”
Dr Barbara Carby in interview with Dionne Jackson Miller, Beyond the Headlines, RJR, January 24, 2023
Dr Carby went on from there to make a broader point about systemic negligence on the part of the Jamaican State:
“I call it the compounding of negligence by the State, because the State is supposed to be monitoring and regulating all of that. And, Dionne, for me it’s part of a larger systemic issue, right? It is the obligation of the State to protect its citizens and it seems to me that in Jamaica the State has totally abdicated that responsibility.
“We have seen it in environment, right? People have to take the State to court. We see it in the development sector. Citizens Associations have to be begging state agencies to enforce laws. We see it in the transport sector, which is chaos. And the most now recent and most high profile example of course is the financial sector. We have to get our governance going properly. The State cannot continue to have this, what I call a very cavalier attitude towards the enforcement of its own laws, updating of laws and bringing them into the twenty – which century are we in?….the twenty-first century, Dionne. We cannot continue like this! We’re over sixty years old!”
As above
Dr Carby mentioned a number of situations in which the Jamaican State has failed and continues to fail in its duty to protect its citizens. There are others.
Having spoken a bit about the need for accountability in the current issue regarding the report on substandard building blocks, Dr Carby commented on the importance of public education, something that is relevant to many other aspects of state responsibility:
“One area which is sadly lacking, I think as well, is public education. We need to let the public know the situation and what they can use what types of blocks for. If you are building a house, ask for the Bureau of Standards stamp, approval for that operation, you know? So a lot of it is an aware public that can help the enforcement, the monitoring, the identification and so on; use the public.”
As above
We need to keep looking at the systemic patterns, at the ways in which negligence by the State already affects people and the ways in which it could affect people in the future. We need to look at why these patterns exist. We need to keep connecting the dots.
Concluding comments
The issue of substandard building blocks is not a new one. For example, in 2015, there was this article in the Gleaner: Poor quality building blocks a major concern – BSJ. And here we are 7 years later…
The concerns about the consequences we could face in the event of an earthquake have particular resonance at the moment with the news of the terrible destruction and loss of life that has occured because of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria this week. The pain and suffering being experienced now is hard to contemplate. I hope that help needed now and in the longer term will be forthcoming.
My New Year posts tend to be similar, having some combination of last or first sunset or sunrise photos, and reflections on endings and beginnings, and a wish for a happy new year. New Year 2023 will be no different…
Last sunset – December 31, 2022
New Year’s Eve Fireworks
First Sunrise – January 1, 2023
And Afterwards…
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are special because we deem them so…a recognised meeting point of the old and the new. An opportunity to let go and to start afresh. Yet they are really no different from any other day in that regard…when the moon – in whatever phase – sets…
…and the sun rises on another day…
…when birds, sitting in trees, sing heartily…
…when sunlight streams across hills….
Each day offers the opportunity for reviewing where we are and whether there are things we would like to do differently going forward. We don’t have to wait till the end of the year.
So, Happy New Year! And Happy New Day!
P.S. All photos were taken from my roof…a spot that holds a special place in my heart! 🙂
Up until the time of publishing this blog post, I have been unable to find copies of the Proclamations and Regulations for the States of Emergency declared on December 6, 2022 online. I have been checking the websites I usually check without success – Office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Parliament. I have also checked the Ministry of National Security website, which isn’t a site I usually check for copies of the Gazette.
Yesterday morning (Dec 14), I called the Jamaica Printing Services on Duke Street to ask if I could collect a copy of the gazetted documents and was told to check back in the afternnon, but I wasn’t able to. I called again this morning and was told yes, I could get the copies. So I collected them this afternoon.
Right Steps & Poui Trees 