Twenty-four hours after Tuesday’s tabling of the Special Investigation Report into whether Prime Minister Andrew Holness had illicitly enriched himself, a full blown political row has erupted between the two major political parties.
The opposition PNP pounced on Wednesday morning, calling on the Prime Minister to leave office immediately.
This afternoon, the governing Jamaica Labour Party, JLP, responded to the PNP by rejecting its call.
The party says Peter Bunting and Mark Golding should resign instead.
The JLP says it maintains that the Integrity Commission report upon which the PNP premised its call, had found the Prime Minister culpable of no wrong doing.
In fact, the JLP says it’s noteworthy that the Director of Corruption Prosecution was clear in saying the Prime Minister’s explanation is credible and therefore prosecution is unwarranted.
The JLP says it wishes to make clear that the Prime Minister will remain in office.
JLP Spokesperson, Juliet Cuthbert Flynn, is describing the resignation call from the PNP as unwarranted.
Mrs. Cuthbert-Flynn says the jab taken on Wednesday at Andrew Holness by the Mark Golding-led party is barefaced.
She says the Integrity Commission’s report into the financial affairs of the Prime Minister does not rise to the level of the 2010 investigation by the Office of the Contractor General, OCG, into an alleged sweetheart deal in which Bunting and Golding were implicated.
Cuthbert-Flynn says it should never be forgotten that investigators from the OCG, which probed the alleged sweetheart deal, found reason to caution against “use of a corruption enabling device which can be utilized by unscrupulous public officials to direct lucrative multi-million dollar state contracts to connected or desired contractors”.
Cuthbert-Flynn says for that reason, Golding and Bunting should resign as Opposition Leader and Leader of Government business in the Senate.
She says Bunting and Golding’s current posture confirms they should never have been allowed near leadership positions.
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