When the House of Representatives convenes tomorrow, Speaker Juliet Holness has no recourse other than to table the Integrity Commission’s report of its investigation into alleged corruption at the Firearms Licensing Authority (FLA).

If Speaker Holness was burdened by a mistaken assumption of a legal or ethical constraint to the publication of the report, that impediment was lifted by the High Court’s rejection last week of an FLA effort to effectively hobble movement on the report, as well as other separate rulings by Jamaica’s courts on the sub judice rule. One of these was delivered only a day prior to Justice Tara Carr’s in Chambers decision in the FLA matter.

Under the law establishing the Integrity Commission (IC), when the IC completes an investigation, the report of the probe has to be forwarded to Parliament for tabling.  The commission is barred from commenting publicly on any such report, at any stage of an investigation, until after it is tabled.