The lead­ers of the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties on Thurs­day met for their first head-to-head clash in the fi­nal of three na­tion­al de­bates.

The high-stakes lead­er­ship de­bate be­tween Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP) leader, Prime Min­is­ter Dr An­drew Hol­ness, and the main op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Par­ty (PNP) Pres­i­dent, Op­po­si­tion Leader Mark Gold­ing, kicked off with a ques­tion over the rul­ing par­ty’s al­leged pat­tern of un­der­min­ing over­sight bod­ies in the pub­lic sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety.

Hol­ness de­nied that his ad­min­is­tra­tion has done any such thing.

“There’s ab­solute­ly no at­tempt by my ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­deed, my­self, to un­der­mine any over­sight body,” the prime min­is­ter de­clared.

He said his gov­ern­ment has in­stead strength­ened such bod­ies, in­clud­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC), which he said he has been very com­pli­men­ta­ry and “act­ed” in a very “dig­ni­fied” way.

He ex­plained that plac­ing the Of­fice of the Po­lit­i­cal Om­buds­man un­der the Elec­toral Com­mis­sion of Ja­maica (ECJ) is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of a move to strength­en an over­sight body and give it a far more in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work.

Hol­ness al­so de­nied claims made by the PNP that he has 28 bank ac­counts.

This sur­faced fol­low­ing the tabling of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­to his fi­nances.

Hol­ness was re­but­ting a point made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Mark Gold­ing sur­round­ing the con­tro­ver­sial salary in­creas­es to mem­bers of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate un­der the com­pen­sa­tion re­view.

The prime min­is­ter used his re­but­tal to de­clare that he nev­er took his salary in­crease, but stat­ed Gold­ing took his as Op­po­si­tion leader.

“The leader of the Op­po­si­tion says, ‘I have 28 bank ac­counts’. That is ab­solute­ly not true!” Hol­ness de­clared.

“The re­port of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­cludes ac­counts that are closed, ac­counts that are dor­mant, in­sur­ance ac­counts, and in­vest­ment ac­counts. They have weaponised it [the ac­counts],” Hol­ness said as his time end­ed on that point.

“In my own In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­port pub­lished in Par­lia­ment, there were no find­ings of cor­rup­tion. All my as­sets are in Ja­maica, and I have de­clared every­thing to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion,” Hol­ness said.

“The leader of the Op­po­si­tion, how­ev­er, al­so had a re­port from the Con­trac­tor Gen­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly, which [al­leged­ly] found that they ben­e­fit­ed from pub­lic re­sources in an ir­reg­u­lar way; they termed it a sweet­heart deal. In my [In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port], there is no such thing. None of my re­sources are ever con­nect­ed to any pub­lic funds or any pub­lic re­sources,” he added.

In re­sponse to Hol­ness’ as­ser­tions, Gold­ing de­nied the claims made re­gard­ing his (Gold­ing’s) fi­nances.

“My [statu­to­ry] de­c­la­ra­tions have been cer­ti­fied every year as be­ing prop­er. Yours (Hol­ness) have not…,” Gold­ing said.

In a lat­er clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Hol­ness once again re­turned to the mat­ter of his fi­nances, ar­gu­ing that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion were closed.

Con­cern­ing plans an­nounced by the PNP to in­crease the in­come tax thresh­old to $3.5 mil­lion, if it forms the next Gov­ern­ment af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Gold­ing came to the de­fense of his par­ty.   

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of in­creas­ing the in­come tax thresh­old, Gold­ing said af­ter 13 years of “belt tight­en­ing”, the debt-to-GDP ra­tio is al­most near the tar­get of 60 per cent.

“This year it is ex­pect­ed to ac­tu­al­ly, with the read­just­ment of the de­f­i­n­i­tion and cal­cu­la­tion of GDP, this is the year that we ex­pect to achieve that tar­get [of debt-to-GDP. That will re­lease two-and-a-half to three per cent of GDP of ad­di­tion­al re­sources, which were not pre­vi­ous­ly bud­get­ed for in the fis­cal pol­i­cy pa­per; that is more than suf­fi­cient to pay for our en­tire pro­gramme, in­clud­ing the $3.5 mil­lion [in­come tax] thresh­old, which will make our civ­il ser­vants and our mid­dle man­agers, and in­deed, most of our Ja­maicans who [are] present­ly suf­fer­ing un­der the high bur­den of the cost of liv­ing have mon­ey that they can spend,” he ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Gold­ing, it is nec­es­sary for the gov­ern­ment to pre­serve the coun­try from brain drain and keep the so­ci­ety in­tact.

Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, in re­but­ting Gold­ing’s re­sponse, said the “hol­low­ing out of the mid­dle class is an act of the PNP”.

“They (the PNP) dec­i­mat­ed the mid­dle class. It is the Ja­maica Labour Par­ty that in­tro­duced the in­crease in the non-tax thresh­old that recre­at­ed a mid­dle class in Ja­maica,” Hol­ness ar­gued.

An­oth­er con­tentious is­sue was that of Gold­ing’s loy­al­ty to Ja­maica based on the fact that he once had British cit­i­zen­ship. 

The Op­po­si­tion leader, who re­nounced his British cit­i­zen­ship last year, took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show a copy of his birth cer­tifi­cate dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

Gold­ing said he al­so had a copy of the doc­u­ment for Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness.

When asked why he nev­er ac­knowl­edged his dual na­tion­al­i­ty up­front and why Ja­maicans should be­lieve he would be forth­com­ing with them on any is­sue, even it’s un­com­fort­able to him, Gold­ing said he “didn’t hes­i­tate to ac­knowl­edge dual cit­i­zen­ship”.

“I was born in Ja­maica, I had a British fa­ther, and I in­her­it­ed British cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent from him; that’s law­ful un­der the laws of Ja­maica, and in­deed, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in Ja­maica are per­mit­ted to be dual na­tion­als,” Gold­ing ex­plained.

I, there­fore, didn’t con­sid­er it to be some­thing which was prob­lem­at­ic. How­ev­er, when it was raised last year and politi­cised, I de­cid­ed I want­ed to know what the Ja­maican peo­ple felt about it be­cause I thought re­al­ly my re­sponse ought to be dri­ven by them,” he added.

The Op­po­si­tion leader said he chose to re­nounce his British cit­i­zen­ship in Au­gust of last year, fol­low­ing the find­ings of an in­ter­nal poll in which the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents said Gold­ing should re­nounce.

The de­bate was the fi­nal ma­jor clash be­tween the par­ties be­fore 45-thou­sand elec­tion day work­ers, po­lice and sol­diers head to the polls on Fri­day.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Aug. 29, CMC

CMC/jm/kb/2025