Nelson must go - Bunting

REPEATED CLAIMS by National Security Minister Dwight Nelson that he had no knowledge, up to last week, of the presence of a P-3 Orion aircraft from the United States which provided surveillance support through "imagery and communication" during the May 24, 2010, Tivoli Gardens incursion has prompted a call from the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) for him to resign or be replaced.

The PNP's spokesman on national security, Peter Bunting, is insisting that claims by Nelson that he was in the dark on the issue raises questions of 'colossal incompetence' or whether the minister lied.

"If you are asked specifically about surveillance aircraft assisting the operations and you have a document before speaking to approving surveillance, then would you not clarify how this surveillance was captured before you make an unqualified statement that said, unequivocally, there was no surveillance aircraft?" Bunting asked.

"With respect to the suitability of Dwight Nelson to continue as minister of national security, it is clear that that is a position of trust. It is equally clear that he is either not trustworthy or not competent to hold that position and, therefore, we are calling on the prime minister to replace him in that position or for him to do the decent thing and resign," the opposition spokesman declared.

But both Prime Minister Holness and the chief of defence staff, Major General Antony Anderson, have painstakingly pointed out that only technical personnel within the Jamaica Defence Force and the relevant US agency would have known about the plane.

"The Ministry of National Security, at that level of detail, would not have been involved. This means of course that the minister would not have been aware that the specifics of the assistance would have included an aircraft," Holness explained late last week.

At an emergency press conference called last Thursday by the prime minister to address the mushrooming controversy, Nelson was unflinching in his insistence that he was not privy to the details of an aircraft being provided by the US.

"My checks were with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to determine the presence of an aircraft. My statement was correct, in that I would not have been given information about an aircraft. I have stated that there are no records in my ministry showing any request for any aircraft," Nelson maintained.

surveillance plane

However, former Minister of National Security K.D. Knight said he was "baffled" by Nelson's insistence, more than 16 months after the incursion, that he was not privy to details of what Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Thursday (December 8) revealed was the acceptance by the Jamaican Government of an offer by the United States to provide "general imagery and communication" in the form of a surveillance plane.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday at the PNP headquarters on Old Hope Road in St Andrew, Knight said: "What further baffles me is that the Jamaican people have often asked the authorities here to seek outside assistance when we get into certain security difficulties and the seeking of that assistance in itself, nothing is wrong with it, so to lie means that there is some underlying reason which the Government has not revealed," he said.

"Two things become clear. One, there is lying and two, there is a cover-up."

Knight insisted that no army chief of staff would have invited a foreign power to send that kind of help without making either the minister of defence aware or the minister of national security.

The PNP also wants to know if Prime Minister Holness was briefed by his predecessor on the matter, "and if so, why did he keep it a secret?"

The opposition spokesman on national security has argued that the surveillance assistance provided by the US Department of Homeland Security in May 2010 might have been done under the controversial memorandum of understanding in which the Jamaica Labour Party blasted the PNP's former national security minister, Dr Peter Phillips, for signing with the US authorities without the knowledge of his then Cabinet colleagues.

Bunting has expressed the view that the tapes or images captured by the US surveillance plane could provide evidence of what actually took place during the Tivoli Gardens operation where at least 73 people were killed.