Golding
Garwin Davis, Assistant News Editor
BRUCE GOLDING'S ambition to become leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), and by extension Prime Minister of Jamaica, could be railroaded by the fact that he is not a member of the House of Representatives, political pundits have argued.
They point to Chapter VI, Section 80 of the Jamaican Constitution which decrees that the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition must be an elected member of the House, a position Mr. Golding has not held in nearly seven years. In 1997, while representing the National Democratic Movement (NDM), he lost his Central St. Catherine seat to the JLP's Olivia "Babsy" Grange.
According to the Constitution: "Whenever the Governor-General has occasion to appoint a Leader of the Opposition he shall, in his discretion, appoint the member of the House of Representatives who, in his judgement, is best able to command the support of a majority of those members who do not support the Government, or, if there is no such person, the member of that House who, in his judgment, commands the support of the largest single group of such members who are prepared to support one leader.
"If the position of Opposition Leader becomes vacant tomorrow, the Opposition members in Parliament would have to select someone from within their ranks who they would then recommend to the Governor-General," notes Dr. Lloyd Barnett, a prominent constitutional attorney. "For Mr. Golding to become Opposition Leader, a seat would have to be created for him, where someone in the party would possibly resign and a by-election is called."
BY-ELECTION
He responded to the questions of whether the onus would then be on the Government to call that election and why would the P.J. Patterson-led administration be willing to accommodate a Bruce Golding.
"It happens from time to time in Great Britain where a person will resign to accommodate a colleague," Dr. Barnett argues. "The Government, while it does reserve that right, could more than likely be pressured into calling a by-election. It wouldn't want to come across as if it was deliberately preventing a constituency from having a representative."
Dr. D.K. Duncan, noted political watcher, takes a slightly different view. "This Government doesn't have a good track record in its willingness to call by-elections," he said. "We have seen in the past where constituencies were left for a long time without representatives in Parliament. I am not sure if the Government would be in much of a hurry to accommodate a Bruce Golding."
Asked whether Golding could assume the position of party leader while someone else takes up the mantle of Opposition Leader, Dr. Duncan noted that there was indeed precedence for such a scenario. "It happened in 1944," he said. "Norman Manley was the PNP leader but because he didn't have a seat in the House, Ivan Lloyd became Leader of the Opposition."
Who then would lead the party into an election in such a scenario?
"The person who is the leader of the party," Dr. Duncan said. "The problem though would be that he has to then win his seat to become Prime Minister if his party wins that is. It is almost always better that the same person who is the Leader of the Opposition is also the party leader."
Some senior political watchers are now wondering though whether Mr. Golding in his much celebrated return to the JLP last year hadn't erred in not insisting on getting a seat to run in the election.
"Bruce Golding's future would be a lot clearer today if he were a Member of Parliament something that could have been arranged during the run-up to the last general election," explained Michael Patterson, constitutional attorney. "He should have insisted on getting a seat to run that should have been his demand. In hindsight that Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that cleared the way for his return is now absolutely meaningless."
Mr. Golding, who had left the JLP some eight years earlier to form the NDM, returned to the JLP on the condition that the party promised to look into his demands for constitutional reforms, something he presented in the form of what became known as Golding's MOU.
