Prenups with (not-so) bright people

Daniel Thwaites

As in so much else, we're mimicking negative aspects of American culture while leaving out the many positive things. It used to be that the prenuptial agreement was frowned upon. Important arrangements, like marriage or, hmmmm, let's see, an appointment to the Senate, shouldn't be governed by wacky secret side contracts.

But in modern-day America, particularly Hollywood, the device has really taken off. Elizabeth Taylor's serial marriages brought the whole thing to public attention. One of her husbands, Larry Fortensky (a construction guy who had himself been married three times prior) became entitled to a million dollars after five years of marriage. If you think about it, five years in purgatory for a million isn't the worst deal. Look at what some of our countrymen have to put up with for a green card? By this time, the Liz Taylor from Black Beauty days had deteriorated significantly.

More recently, it was reported that Justin Timberlake agreed to pay Jessica Biel $500,000 for cheating. That's expensive. Most men just have to deal with the credit cards being maxed out. But that's cheap cheating compared to Charlie Sheen's $4-million agreement with Denise Richards if he cheated. Now that's some serious consequences and repercussions!

Nowadays, you can use a prenup to regulate the maximum weight a partner can gain, the frequency of sex, number of prepared meals, and relationships to the in-laws.

What we had not realised was that these prenuptials could be used to turn the Jamaican Senate into a pack of muppets. The concern was that a senator might be persuaded to cheat on the Privy Council in England, to which the JLP leadership is solemnly wedded. So, in an effort to make all of their senators impervious to reason, logic and debate, this secret device was concocted.

As an aside, while we're Jamaicanising the prenup for the Senate, I think there's scope for 'rum allowances', a 'bird-shooting allowance', and a 'bad-wud allowance'. Maybe we can even regulate the weekly 'football allowance', meaning a gentleman may be limited to only one or two English Premier League matches per week. This could be a tool for an outbreak and epidemic of harmony.

So here's a starting list of some famous messy breakups where prenups may have been involved. Let's see:

Madonna vs Guy Ritchie

Kim Basinger vs Alec Baldwin

D'Angel vs Beenie

D'Angel vs Bounty

Shelli vs Mr Vegas

Holness vs Tufton

Holness vs Williams

Ah, yes: the hapless senators!

Should they have tendered their resignations voluntarily? Yes, I think so. Mr Holness earned his mandate and is entitled to put his team together. But I believe that convention and public pressure would have brought Tufton and Williams to their senses, and so the pre-signed resignations were overkill that has brought us into dangerous constitutional territory.

THIS ONE MISJUDGED

The Gleaner, uncharacteristically, misjudged this one. It rightly argued that Tufton and Williams ought to resign. But it also endorsed the 'secret letter' tactic, supposedly because Eric Williams used to do it in Trinidad. Well, that's introducing a red herring as a prelude to leaping from a cliff. For Holness' drawing on pre-signed letters was like eradicating mosquitoes with napalm: the mosquitoes are gone, but so is most everything else. Mr Holness achieved his end, but by constitutionally suspicious means and by humiliating every recent senator.

What if this trend were to catch on? The idea that the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition can have suitcases full of resignations that they pull out whenever would make our Government an even greater creature of party-puppeteering than it already is. Why bother to 'debate' anything important in the Senate since a change of mind would trigger a resignation? By the way, are the members of all government boards to submit letters as well? We could achieve an even tighter system of yes-men and lackeys if we go about this energetically.

I hope the court throws these letters out, finds that they are of no effect, and repugnant to our system of government. But it also has to be asked: Who in their right mind would sign a resignation letter like that? So the court should probably notice that anyone willing to suffer that indignity to call oneself a senator shouldn't be in the Senate in the first place.

How long has this been going on? I'd love to hear Mr Tufton talk about whether being ordered to sign humiliating letters like that factored into his conclusion that Mr Holness is "afraid of bright people" and "insecure". But Tufton could have (and should have) refused appointment if a precondition of it was that he sign off on being a sheep.

And it's hard to feel much sympathy for Arthur Williams as the draughtsman. As has happened, who could say that the letters would serve only their initial purpose? It might start out as a string for the puppeteer on the CCJ, but it surely wouldn't end there, because the same letter jook sheep, might jook Goat Island or any other thing that a senator might want to have an independent thought about.

We know that senators belong to the political parties, but that doesn't mean that they are marionettes of the party leader or president. I thought Mr Holness was 'pattersoning' himself after the Great Percival? What happened to that? Incidentally, when Percival ascended the throne, he didn't scatter people willy-nilly.

Not to mention - oh, my God! - don't we have enough stooges, foils, supernumeraries, room-temperature IQ sycophants, 12th men, obsequious dullards, and left backs already in the system? Yes, the prime minister and the leader of Opposition generally retain the right to fire, but at least they have to bother themselves to do the firing!

If on top of the oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the people, there are these side agreements, they should, at the very minimum, be public.

By the way, I'm quite certain that some of the signators who complied with this objectionable attempt to fetter their minds and consciences were raising ruckus when it was (improperly) revealed that Jamaican law enforcement, in an attempt to stem the flow of guns and drugs, had entered MOUs with foreign law enforcement. Can you imagine a more warped sense of what is and isn't properly secret? A secret agreement to stop drug dons? Heck, no! A secret agreement to control and manipulate the Senate? Pass mi di big pen! Where do I sign?

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.