Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
Marvin Goodman, architect, Member of Parliament for South Central St. Catherine Sharon Hay Webster and veteran journalist Hartley Neita, at the Gleaner's Editors' Forum discussing the need for a new Parliament building held at the Gleaner's Kingston offices on Thursday July 6, 2006. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
THE VETERAN journalist, Hartley Neita, recalls it well. It was the late 1950s. Duke Street was abuzz with excitement. A new Parliament building was being opened.
Gordon House was erected just beside the old structure, Headquarters House, which for almost a century, had served as the national legislative chamber.
"It was a big thing when Gordon House was opened," Neita recalled at last week's Gleaner Editors' Forum. "All the parliamentarians gathered at the old Parliament and there were speeches and cheers before they all marched across to the new building!"
But even amid the excitement, there were certain realities to contend with.
As Neita recalls, Gordon House was not built to house the national Parliament, but the municipal government the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). Parliament then comprised less than 50 MPs and there were only five media entities covering its deliberations - The Gleaner, Public Opinion, and the Jamaica Times and two radio stations RJR and JBC. Hence the press box was built to accommodate only six chairs.
No provision was made for meeting rooms for the various committees of Parliament, and research facilities were at the bare minimum.
So, almost immediately, a national effort reportedly got under way towards the construction of a permanent home for Parliament. An architectural model was prepared and taken across the island for the people's comments.
Half a century later, Parliament still meets at Gordon House. In the meantime, the number of MPs has grown to 60, with plans afoot to increase this number to 63 in the first instance and, possibly, 65, later.
INADEQUATE VISITORS' GALLERY
There are now up to three times as many media outlets seeking to cover Parliament on any given day, within the same space originally designed for six, and for which hardly any provision was made for television coverage. So, on many occasions, reporters and camera crew spill over into the already inadequate visitors' gallery to 'capture' space to do their work.
Oliver Clarke, Chairman of The Gleaner Company who in November 2003, submitted a report on behalf of the Committee on Parliamentary Salaries, rehashed some of the relevant recommendations from that report during the Editors' Forum.
"We found that the building was woefully inadequate to facilitate the very important work that 60 MPs and 21 Senators need to have in order to perform their duties. The building is physically cramped; the resources available border on the disgraceful in terms of the absence of facilities for telephones, for Internet, the facilities to do research anything that would allow an MP to require background material to facilitate debates, are woefully inadequate."
So, the Clarke Committee
recommended that "a new Parliament building be
constructed to allow for
parliamentarians to perform their work efficiently." It asserted
further that "the legislature cannot continue to carry out their work within the limited and inadequate space of the existing Parliament building."
At the Editors' Forum, Government MPs Sharon Hay Webster and Fitz Jackson (Deputy Leader of Government Business) and Senator Trevor Munroe all supported the call for a new Parliament building.
"Within the design of this new Parliament building there should be meeting rooms, there should be an adequate lobby area where you can meet with various groupings, facilities for parliamentarians separate for MP's and Senators and provisions for electronic voting," Hay Webster suggested.
And, with a wistful look on her face, the well-travelled MP (being a member of the
Joint ACP-EU Parliamentary Assembly, among international bodies) lyrically expounded on how much of a difference it would make to the legislative process "in a Parliament buildings such as the one in Brasilia as against the cramped one we have here in Jamaica."
Professor Munroe also stressed the need to improve the research facilities available to parliamentarians in order for them to perform their duties adequately. He complained that often, "parliaments in general are relatively deprived of the level and quality of research compared to the executive, that is required to
deal with complex items of
legislation."
In that regard, he cited two items of great currency here in Jamaica Companies Act and the Charter of Rights bill which required substantial comparative research as to how other parliaments and legislatures dealt with similar issues.
The recent decision to hire eight research interns (master's students from the University of the West Indies) was a positive one, in keeping with the
recommendations of the Clarke Committee, he said, but only a first step towards accomplishing the acknowledged need.
While accepting the need for basic improvements to the parliamentary facilities, Senator Anthony Johnson, Leader of Opposition Business in the Upper House, was less than enthusiastic about proposals to construct a new building in the near future.
SEVERAL OTHER OPTIONS
There were, he argued, several other options which could be pursued. Among them, he cited an old suggestion made by the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party: that of converting the Jamaica Conference Centre on the Kingston waterfront to Parliament's use.
Another option, he said, could be the former Oceana Hotel, located beside the Jamaica Conference Centre, which now houses the offices of the Ministry of Health.
"The Oceana has the committee room space and is certainly capable of accommodating most of the functions and facilities which Parliament requires," he asserted.
That suggestion was immediately shot down by the respected architect, Marvin Goodman.
"The Oceana Hotel, in addition to being ugly, is a third- or fourth-rate facility. In my experience, when you try to fix up a third rate building, by the time you finish redoing so many aspects of it, you still end up with a third-rate facility, so I think that should be avoided at all costs," he said.
Responding to another option raised by Senator Johnson, Goodman discouraged another 'stopgap' measure to 'fix up' Gordon House by adding some meeting rooms through the acquisition of adjacent lands.
ONLY THE TEMPORARY LASTS
"The French have a saying that it is only the temporary that lasts ... and the idea of doing these stopgap things will only mean that nothing (meaningful) will happen," he asserted.
While supporting the concept of a new Parliament building, Goodman is warning against over expenditure on a lavish edifice.
It should be a "people's Parliament," he said, pleasing to the eyes and welcoming to the country's citizens.
"Jamaica should ensure that we do not go for too much grandeur in this new Parliament no gold dome, no marble halls, but something reflecting the land of wood and water and its ecology and environment; something that represents aspirations, not awe and the fact that it is the people's Parliament ... But there is no question ... Gordon House, even in an expanded format, will not do."
Morin Seymour, executive director of Kingston Restoration Company (KRC), was equally forceful in his endorsement of the idea of a new Parliament building.
"We cannot continue to
develop Jamaica by doing everything in a mediocre way. This (Parliament) is the seat of government, where all the major decisions are made and therefore we need the best facilities to enable good decision-making."
Such a project, he argued, would enhance the redevelopment of downtown Kingston. In that connection, he suggested that there were several locations downtown where derelict buildings could be demolished to make way for the new structure.
Regarding the cost of the new building, Seymour contends that the most important step is to agree on the project, then pursue the funding.
"The truth is that if we agree that we need a Parliament building, then we know we can find the money by planning for it and the planning can go several ways you can do it as a public/
private partnership coming up with a financial plan, because clearly there are elements that the public sector could fund and other elements that the private sector could fund. Something like this is really good value."
AN OLD SUGGESTION
Regarding the ideal location for a new Parliament building, Hay Webster returned to an old suggestion that it be placed somewhere within or on the periphery of National Heroes Park.
Anthony Johnson warned, however, that the JLP would never support such a large structure being placed in the park. It should be left clear of such structures, he argued, in order to allow the city to "breathe."
One site, of historical significance to some advocates, is the old Myrtle Bank Hotel site on the seafront, east of the Bank
of Jamaica. That location, Goodman, said, was recently suggested in a master's thesis by an architecture student.
While not being wedded to the idea, Goodman acknowledged that it would be an attractive site, if developed in concert with other improvement projects along the Kingston waterfront.
Whatever the option, Fitz Jackson is crying out for consensus on the way forward.
"Parliament must be special to the people and the more special it is to the people as a whole, those of us who serve there ... it will drive home to us the point that we have a special opportunity and demand more from you because you are not in an
ordinary place."
He again acknowledged, however, that some parliamentarians were "running scared" for fear of the people's anger at any proposal to engage in what might be characterised as extravagant expenditure for a new parliamentary edifice.
The answer to that dilemma, the Clarke Committee argued, might be to establish a Parliamentary commission,
comprising non-parliamentarians, to lobby for the new building.
Oliver Clarke returned to that proposal during the Editors' Forum.
"We felt that one of the core values in a democracy is to allow residents in a constituency to meet with their MP. If an MP isn't given the resources to either rent an office or, alternatively, to staff it, then that component of democracy suffers. A much larger amount of resources needs to be made available to make the
legislative system function
properly," he reiterated.
