Someone needs to explain to me why the Portia Simpson-led Administration has kept Patrick Atkinson as the Attorney General of Jamaica.
Mr Atkinson has thus far presided over the pension opinion muddle, the return of millions of dollars to Area Don "Zeeks" without any request for source of funds, the authorisation of the withdrawal of $45-b from the National Housing Trust (before the drafting of a Bill to amend the NHT Act) and now, his latest, the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) matter.
Having lost the application to the Supreme Court to prevent the OCG from examining certain projects at the pre-contractual stage, and having filed an appeal against the decision, he has now announced that a minister will propose to Parliament that the Contractor General's Act be amended to exclude the power of pre-contractual reviews. He then stated that if the Cabinet finds favour with the proposal, he would then file a notice of discontinuance of the appeal. Can some luminary explain from the perspective of legal strategy or otherwise, how this public announcement makes sense for the chief legal advisor to the Cabinet?
Is he admitting that the appeal is unlikely to succeed? Isn't a new law coming to create a whole new anti-corruption agency? Doesn't a ruling of the Court suffice until then? Is the plan to chop and cut away the powers of the OCG until there is a new agency with no powers?
At such a critical time in Jamaica's development, how can the Government, or we, the people, have faith in his stewardship of the AG's Department?
Melissa Brown
Toll Gate
Clarendon
Attorney General blunders again
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Mr Atkinson has thus far presided over the pension opinion muddle, the return of millions of dollars to Area Don "Zeeks" without any request for source of funds, the authorisation of the withdrawal of $45-b from the National Housing Trust (before the drafting of a Bill to amend the NHT Act) and now, his latest, the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) matter.
Having lost the application to the Supreme Court to prevent the OCG from examining certain projects at the pre-contractual stage, and having filed an appeal against the decision, he has now announced that a minister will propose to Parliament that the Contractor General's Act be amended to exclude the power of pre-contractual reviews. He then stated that if the Cabinet finds favour with the proposal, he would then file a notice of discontinuance of the appeal. Can some luminary explain from the perspective of legal strategy or otherwise, how this public announcement makes sense for the chief legal advisor to the Cabinet?
Is he admitting that the appeal is unlikely to succeed? Isn't a new law coming to create a whole new anti-corruption agency? Doesn't a ruling of the Court suffice until then? Is the plan to chop and cut away the powers of the OCG until there is a new agency with no powers?
At such a critical time in Jamaica's development, how can the Government, or we, the people, have faith in his stewardship of the AG's Department?
Melissa Brown
Toll Gate
Clarendon
Attorney General blunders again
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