Churches call for office of ombudsman’s re-instatement

JAMAICA

As the political parties prepare for the local government election February 28, 2024, one church group is amplifying the call for the Office of the Political Ombudsman (OPO) to be re-instituted.

Earlier this year, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck, told the country that the office would be closed, and its operations subsumed into the Electoral Commission of Jamaica. However, the process has not been completed.

In a fresh wave of concern, the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC), via a statement November 20, is calling for the reinforcement of the Political Ombudsman (Interim) Act (2002) to give greater focus to the monitoring of political conduct by vesting greater power in the OPO and the subsequent appointment of a suitably qualified official to fill this post.

“These are necessary courses of action as the nation prepares for its engagements in Local Government and subsequent General Elections, as disconcerting signals have already begun to emerge,” JCC President Archbishop Kenneth Richards of Kingston said in a statement.

The Archbishop said that the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Office of Jamaica [EOJ] together form the policy and operational arms of the country’s electoral system, which provide for the “smooth and fair fulfilment of the laws which govern its electoral processes”.

He outlined “these institutions and their machinery are the product of the bi-partisan and broad-based national co-operation that successfully extricated our electoral process from the tribal, hostile and volatile political climate which prevailed in earlier periods of our political history.”

The OPO, the statement said, emerged as a part of the framework to ensure transparency, probity, and decency in the conduct of the country’s political officials and their associates in the “cut and thrust” pursuit for political power and the exercise of the suffrage of the citizens.

“The experience and encounters of the Office of the Political Ombudsman deal largely with confrontational encounters, reports and allegations of misconduct and breaches of the Political Code of Conduct,” the statement said.

The religious leaders say they see “a clear distinction” between the expectations and administrative functions of the Electoral Commission and the OPO’s policing of the conduct of public officials in the pursuit of representational politics.

Subsuming the OPO within the EC, they say, may run the risk of (re)introducing concerns and confrontations of a partisan nature and detract from the distinctly apolitical and neutral work of the EC.

“Indeed, we see great value in an independent and strengthened OPO. We therefore call on the government to abort this intention…” the statement said.