‘Supporting oversight’ is how The Gleaner editorial of June 2, summed up former Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s remarks at a recent Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal symposium. Golding’s comments came during a time when public outrage and INDECOM’s speedy investigations prompted the quick laying of charges against the police officer implicated in Latoya Bulgin’s killing, at a time when the Constitutional Court overruled the prime minister’s grant of a mining permit to Bengal Development Limited and at a time when the government passed the NaRRA legislation without meaningful public consultation or adequate oversight.

All of this brought two things to mind:

First, the extraordinary nature of the bipartisan civil society consensus, which over the last 50 years underpinned the design and passage of the laws and institutions which strengthened accountability, transparency and citizen empowerment in Jamaica.