From left, Dr. Carolyn Gomes and Derrick Smith

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

The first 100 days of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government are winding down, and a number of issues the administration pledged to address within its first 100 days are still waiting to be attended to.

While delivering fully on three key promises, which are the bill to amend PMs' pensions, abolishing tuition fees in secondary schools, and, reviewing libel laws, two pressing bills are being actively drafted and waiting to be presented to Parliament. These are the establishment of an independent body to investigate police corruption and abuses, and the appointment of a special prosecutor to tackle high-level corruption.

But, the advancement of both bills seems to have been overshadowed by debates over whether Dutch authorities would be allowed in the island to question high-ranking People's National Party (PNP) members with respect to bribery allegations against Dutch oil-lifting company, Trafigura Beheer.

Rhetoric

The PM's promise to push through these bills became rhetoric during the run-up to the September 3 general election.

"When I become Prime Minister, I don't expect that people will be wondering whether I'm still trying to find my feet and so on. They must know that we mean business and we're going to start from the first week we take office," Mr. Golding told The Gleaner in an interview leading up to the election.

Executive Director of Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), Dr. Carolyn Gomes, says while it is good that the bills have been drafted, the advocacy group did not expect that the bill would have already reached Parliament for debate, due to the often-delayed process in having bills drafted.

"We would like to see that (the bills) come forward as quickly as possible. We think that that's important for making the changes to bring crime under control," Dr. Gomes comments.

So far, three bills have been tabled in the House, but none has been passed. These include a bill to amend the Income Tax Act; an act to amend the the Pensions (Prime Minister) Act; and, an act to amend the Constitution to include the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only one bill - to amend the prime ministers' pensions - was included in its 100-day commitment.

Leader of Government Business, Derrick Smith, tells The Sunday Gleaner that three months was not enough time to bring all the issues to Parliament.

"I don't know that we promised to bring all of them in the first 100 days to Parliament. Certainly, we've started some, but we couldn't have promised to take all," Mr. Smith tells our news team.

The JLP has, however, made good on its promise to start a review of libel and slander laws. A committee was set up last month as a first step in reviewing the penalties and stringency of the Libel and Slander Act. The committee was also later charged with reviewing the Secrecy Act.

The Government has also been able to make good on its promise to absorb tuition fees for children enrolled in secondary schools and has fully refunded parents who had paid the fees at the beginning of the new school year.

In the arena of development and planning, while there has been much talk about streamlining the planning and development process, it has been slow going for implementation of some key measures the Government was hoping to establish in its 100-day deadline.

Development orders

In a Gleaner Editors' Forum in July, the JLP said it would be enforcing the development orders of urban centres in order to regulate land use in those areas and make planning more efficient.

In addition, last month, Prime Minister Golding announced that an oversight body would have been established at the end of November to ensure policies and programmes agreed on at the National Planning Summit in Montego Bay were implemented. The body is yet to be established. Further to that, he also committed his party to establishing a board within the National Environment and Planning Agency to speed up the approval of development plans.

Speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, Minister of Environment, Rudyard Spencer, says plans were well advanced for the establishment of the board, and that he was hopeful that it would be in full swing by the first quarter of the next financial year.

The board is expected to accelerate the approval process of planning applications, committing itself to responding within 90 days. It will also share responsibility with parish councils for enforcing existing development orders to prohibit development in areas which have been declared no-building zones.

"The Government shouldn't have to spend again and again to assist persons living in areas that are disaster zones," he says.