Could Robertson’s fate befall other ministers? Gov’t to hold high-level talks with US about concerns BY INGRID BROWN Senior staff reporter browni@jamaicaobserver.com Thursday, May 26, 2011
FRETTING that the fate of James Robertson could befall other members of his administration, Prime Minister Bruce Golding has assigned his deputy, Dr Ken Baugh to ascertain why the United States revoked the former mining and energy minister's visa.
Golding, apparently mandated by his worried Cabinet, yesterday instructed Baugh, the foreign affairs minister, to meet with US Ambassador Pamela Bridgewater to ascertain what led to the revocation of Robertson's visa and to discuss the administration's concerns.
"That's a great concern of the Government and (would be to) any government and that is why the discussions that are taking place at the highest level have been ordered," Information Minister Daryl Vaz confirmed to journalists at yesterday's post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House in Kingston.
Asked to confirm rumours that other government ministers were next in line to lose their US visas, Vaz said he could not speak to these rumours, suggesting that "only time will tell". Just over a year ago, reports out of New York said three unnamed senior government ministers were under the microscope of the Grand Jury of the Southern District Court of New York which indicted Christopher 'Dudus' Coke last August on alleged gunrunning and drug-trafficking charges.
Well-informed Observer sources said the Americans were contending that the Jamaican Government officials had conspired to prevent information from reaching the Grand Jury in the Coke case, at the time the latest in the fallout from the Manatt, Phelps and Phillips law firm controversy.
Investigators probing breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) involving the Government of Jamaica, and the US law firm were piecing together evidence they said would expose the alleged link between the Government officials, Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, and Coke, the former Tivoli Gardens strongman.
Asked if the cancellation of other ministers' visas could cripple the Government and open up Jamaica to political engineering by a foreign state, Vaz admitted that it was a concern of his administration.
He said Robertson's resignation was inevitable given that it was untenable for a Cabinet minister to carry out his duties effectively if access was denied to the United States.
"...The revocation of a visa to the US makes your position as minister of government almost untenable automatically; it prevents free movement from carrying out your portfolio responsibilities."
Asked further what would be the implications if the prime minister's visa was among those cancelled, Vaz said this was also being examined.
"That's a matter that is being discussed as we speak based on what happened on Friday last," Vaz said. He explained further that these discussions would have to go through a process, following which the Cabinet would have to deliberate on the information received.
Vaz, however, reiterated that the issuance of a visa was the right of a sovereign state to grant this privilege to a visa holder.
"There is no way I can sit here and tell anybody how to operate their country; they have taken a decision and that is within their rights," Vaz said. "We can pursue that as best as possible through diplomatic channels to make sure that whatever the reason and cause we find out and deal with it accordingly," he added.
Invited to speculate on whether Robertson's decision to resign from the energy and mining portfolio might be playing into possible political engineering by the United States, Vaz said he did not wish to do so.
"I don't want to sit here and speculate especially with such a sensitive issue, suffice it to say a decision was made by Robertson to resign and we respect that decision," he said. Meanwhile, Vaz insisted that Jamaica still enjoyed good relations with the US Government. "From where I sit I know I enjoy the best of relations and the Government of Jamaica, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, does the same," he insisted.
"...Overall we have enjoyed a fantastic relationship with the US and we continue to do so," Vaz told reporters.
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One possible reason why things are not going according to plans is there never was a plan
IN the latter part of last week a large part of the general message that the PNP was carrying to its constituents and party faithful was that they should begin to prepare themselves for elections because it is more than likely that a fallout from the Dudus trial — should names be called — will have a most negative impact on the JLP's chances at the next general election.
They probably never did plan for the Americans revoking the visa of Energy Minister James Robertson and his wife and the subsequent resignation of the minister, a powerful JLP deputy leader. With the minister reporting to the press that no reason for his visa revocation was given, the fact of his resignation from the Cabinet must bring about speculation that the JLP leadership knows something that we do not know.
First, to me, the visa revocation, without an explanation, could not, by itself, require a resignation. It is either that an explanation was given in private which brought about the resignation, or there are still outstanding treaty matters where the government has been foot-dragging and an important message needed to be sent.
Second, tied in to the latter part of the first consideration, it could be that the last two years have shown the Americans that the JLP administration is not one that they are comfortable doing business with, and some amount of "proactivity" has been exercised by the US to lead us to begin the breaking-off process between ourselves and the JLP.
It is either that the energy minister is the easiest target, or his visa revocation and subsequent resignation from his substantive posts are justified in the eyes of those who are in receipt of more information than I have.
If those reasons are such that the public will not be able to have the benefit of a full and truthful explanation, then the JLP will have to accept the negative fallout which will naturally arise from the mountain of speculation which is likely to follow.
Not that there has been one brief season of political peace for the JLP administration since its win in September 2007, but even in the best of times, it has not handled them very well. The explanation by Minister Robertson's lawyer that the 2010 Ian Johnson asylum-seeking affidavit alleging major wrongdoing by Robertson could have been a cause of the visa revocation can only be accepted 100 per cent if we accept that the US Immigration Services operate 180 degrees apart from its diplomatic arm.
It is of course a fact that a negative report on a Jamaican entering the USA's borders can cause a landing refusal. That is even more so if one is a private citizen whose name does not open any pages on Google. I cannot say how the collective mindset of the US State Department/the diplomatic service operates, but knowing that the US operatives in Jamaica know more about us than we believe they do, I cannot see the US visa revocation of a Jamaica government minister as happening outside of an action carefully considered behind closed doors.
It is my belief, as I stated before, that the US has decided to wash its hands of this JLP administration.
The reshuffling of the PNP Opposition Shadow Cabinet at just about the same time is much too coincidental to be just "a coincidence". Something has been transmitted to the PNP — more than what has been carried by the media, and as parties in Opposition are wont to do, the PNP is trying its best to make itself more politically attractive. How it can do that with pretty much the same team of the last administration is the great puzzle.
f we buy the PNP's argument that revelations from the trial of Dudus will have a negative impact on the JLP, we are forced to conclude that those negatives, in hard numbers of likely voters, will yield positives for the PNP in its potential voting support next year. The shifting of Omar Davies from covering the finance portfolio to transport and works in the PNP's Shadow Cabinet is more an open indication that the PNP is trying to plug that last, vital loophole — that of making itself attractive to local private-sector funding.
It is known that opinion polls can only be an accurate representation of the actual to the extent that both parties are adequately funded. It has been known for some time that since some time in 2006, the PNP has not been able to attract the level of funding needed to win elections. This Shadow Cabinet shift, highly imperfect as I see it, is, however, one major attempt to increase its election readiness.
The Manatt/Dudus report, expected to be harmful to the JLP's causes, along with fallout from the Dudus trial, will be nails in the JLP's political coffin. If the new visa applications of Robertson and his wife are not considered and dealt with positively during that period, the negatives will pile up against the administration in the press, and more important, in the minds of potential voters. Come election time next year, despite the JDIP funds, those marks against the JLP are likely to lead to only one result, and that is, a PNP win.
Unfortunately for the JLP, the Jamaican voting population has not, in two decades, given it the benefit of the doubt in crucial matters. Most of the hard-working people in the JLP, including James Robertson in his party roles, are of the belief that their victory will lie in the rural areas where front-page news items are assimilated differently than those of us with too much time on our hands to worry about non-bread-and-butter matters.
In this respect, the PNP and the JLP will be going off in different directions in their effort to win. The Opposition PNP will be hoping that the Robertson visa matter will be still outstanding, the Manatt report will be doing its damage and that Dudus will call the names of "big" people in the JLP. The JLP will be moving to shore up its base in the rural areas while hoping that the negatives in the PNP's dual-citizen games will allow it to snatch two added crucial seats.
Somehow, in all of that, a sense of déjà vu will descend on us — time and time again, like a spinning wheel.
For the JLP's sake, though, it needs to solve the puzzle of Minister Robertson's visa revocation pronto. The trajectory from the delays in the Dudus extradition to the present is one major fault line in political speculation that the JLP cannot afford to have outstanding for too long. It has the potential to put the JLP back where it was in the 1989 to 2007 period.
