THE FIRST sitting of the joint select committee of Parliament to examine money laundering legislation was an embarrassment a circumstance emphasised by the Jamaica Labour Party's Audley Shaw. And, since the parliamentary committees are now open to the public, the untidy passage of this potentially controversial legisation has stumbled badly at the very start.
The committee stage of legislation calls for detailed examination of the provisions and the exchanges between members are less formal than the actual debates on Second Reading in the House or Senate. The Attorney-General is the principal adviser to the Government; so when a senior representative of his department maintains that the Ministry of Finance had failed to make "fundamental adjustments" to the proposed legislation, Minister Davies was not amused.
Implicit in the dispute is that the Attorney-General's department took too long to analyse the draft legislation and to forward its recommendation to the minister. If there were, indeed, bureaucratic delays, the minister's impatience is understandable. This could also reflect pressure from external sources to bring Jamaican law on money laundering more in line with its counterpart in the United States and Britain.
But this, however, would not be entirely logical since any extremes of certain provisions in the American and UK laws may be counterbalanced by other legislative safeguards and traditions in those countries which are missing in our young democracy. All laws in America, for example, must pass the test of a stringent Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Our Bill of Rights is anaemic by comparison and has not, in our opinion, proven to be a sufficient safeguard against human rights violations by the state.
In a recent editorial entitled 'State Security vs Freedom', while supporting the need for tougher money laundering legislation to help in the fight against narco trafficking, we pointed out some of the dangers of the proposed amendments. We are especially concerned about attempts to erode the doctrine of privilege between lawyers and client.
And we are aware of the possibility that Dr. Davies, while trying to get the Jamaican legislation in concert with current thinking, may be happy to take advantage of its provision to tighten the local tax net and give to government even greater overall central power than it now has.
Ultimately, what is needed is balance, best achieved by making haste slowly. We think Mr. Shaw is right to characterise the present bill as fatally flawed and we support his call for it to be redrafted.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
