http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/12/1626659/jamaica-pm-admits-role-against.html<snip>
Jamaica PM admits role against US drug extradition
By MIKE MELIA
Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Jamaica's prime minister has acknowledged authorizing a lobbying firm to help the government contest a U.S. extradition request for a prominent Jamaican community leader accused of drug and arms trafficking.
A senior opposition leader urged Prime Minister Bruce Golding to resign Wednesday after Golding notified parliament that he sanctioned the lobbying effort against the extradition of Christopher Coke.
A U.S. indictment accuses "Dudus" Coke of leading a gang with members in Jamaica and the United States that sold marijuana and crack cocaine in the New York area and elsewhere and funneled profits back to Coke. His name has been included on a U.S. Justice Department list of the world's most dangerous drug kingpins.
Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/12/1626659/jamaica-pm-admits-role-against.html#ixzz0noZFch5whttp://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100513/lead/lead1.html<snip>
THE SOUNDS of consternation, shock and fury reverberated around Jamaica into boardrooms and bars, barber shops and parlours, on the streets and into homes as Jamaicans wrestled with the unabashed about-face of Prime Minister Bruce Golding.
After weeks of vehement denials that he had anything to do with the American law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Golding admitted on Tuesday that he actually sanctioned the talks.
Leading the chorus of no-confidence against Prime Minister Golding was Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller, who yesterday described his admission as the 'mother of all scandals'.
"The prime minister's admission that he sanctioned a scheme to circumvent the role of the Government
of Jamaica to resolve a treaty dispute with the government of the United States of America and normal diplomatic channels has brought the Government into disrepute.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/It-is-just-plain-deception--Mr-Golding_7602713<snip>
IT must rank as one of the greatest acts of political deception ever played out on the Jamaican people. Bruce Golding, the leader who most strongly expressed his distaste for criminal politics and towered over PJ Patterson and Eddie Seaga in that regard - in the period 1995 to 1997 when he left the JLP to form the NDM - is now in 2010 being perceived as the leader doing the most to advance the cause of that infernal, destructive union.
The prime minister's mind-boggling "revelation" in the House on Tuesday that it was he, acting as JLP party leader, who had sanctioned the engagement of American law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips to lobby the US government on treaty matters, has opened the door to the greater issue having to do with the leadership competence of Mr Golding in his role as prime minister and the simpler but more important matter of his trustworthiness.
http://www.daylife.com/article/02dccsr2VO8Wx<snip>
" I sanctioned the initiative, knowing that such interventions have in the past proven to be of considerable value in dealing with issues involving the governments of both countries"
– Bruce Golding SOURCE: Centre Daily Times
------------------------
Apparently Mr. Golding believed that their 1980s RW allies (the Re
THUGS) were still in power.
He can now be viewed as an accessory and end up like Noriega...I suspect that State Department requests for at least two ministers of government will be coming soon and very soon.