Jackson Challenges Chang To Produce Constitutional Court Ruling On MOUs

Kingston, Jamaica. October 30, 2019: The People’s National Party (PNP) Shadow Minister of National Security, Mr. Fitz Jackson, MP, has challenged the Minister of National Security, Dr. Horace Chang, M.P., to produce a copy of any ruling by Jamaica’s Constitutional Court that the information sharing MOUs with the US, UK and Canada were rendered unconstitutional.

In a statement this afternoon, Mr. Jackson said both Dr. Chang and Prime Minister Holness have misled the House of Representatives, yesterday afternoon when they said the MOUs had been “deemed” unconstitutional and their use had to be discontinued. He said legal research and inquiries at the Court, today, proved futile in finding any such ruling.

The PNP Shadow Minister charged that the unconstitutionality claim was raised as a legal smokescreen to excuse the irresponsibility of the government in disrupting the information flow between Jamaica and its international security partners, which has caused a deterioration in the nation’s security situation and angered our long-standing important partners in the fight against transnational crime, particularly the narcotics trade.

He said, whereas the Party welcomed the signing of the new arrangements, the three year disruption has caused serious setbacks in Jamaica’s crime-fighting and in particular, the disruption of the flow of guns and drugs and the apprehension of drug dealers, as was the case after the first MOU came into being in the early 2000s. It is the proceeds from transnational criminal activities that finance the organized gangs in Jamaica.

Mr. Jackson said Minister Chang needed to come clean to the country as constitutional rulings cannot be kept a secret from the Jamaican people. He said the legal research has only been able to find one case of an application for an intercept being denied on an ex-parte application. If that is what the Minister and the Prime Minister were referring to, they are guilty of misleading as a judge in chambers could not be confused with three judges hearing a constitutional issue.

He called on the Minister to remove politics and gamesmanship from the administration of Jamaica’s national security in the interest of the Jamaican people.

He says the PNP expects a full explanation and withdrawal of the misleading statements and assurances of no such repetition.