If the Government can muster the effort and get to thinking about it, they would be wise, even at this stage, to just let slide their censure of Karl Samuda for supposedly misleading the House about the nature of a document ostensibly prepared by Noel Hylton on the Sandals Whitehouse controversy.

In that regard, Parliament's Committee on Privileges, which is to determine Mr. Samuda's punishment, after the House voted against him, would not convene on the matter.

Mr. Hylton has led the Port Authority of Jamaica with great distinction - and profitably for the Government. No one found it objectionable, therefore, when he was asked by former Prime Minister, P. J. Patterson, to help sort out the differences between Gordon 'Butch' Stewart's Gorstew and the Urban Development Corporation (UDC). This was over who was responsible for the more than US$40 million overrun in the Sandals Whitehouse hotel in which they were partners and who should pay what.

It appears that Mr. Hylton, in what essentially was a 'good office' effort, failed to find a consensus between the parties on an issue that has been the subject of two full investigations and is a cause célèbre of the Opposition.

However, Mr. Samuda took to Parliament a document which he claimed to be Mr. Hylton's report on the affair and insisted that it had been sent to former Prime Minister Patterson and perhaps reviewed by the Cabinet. The document had not been made public, Mr. Samuda suggested, because it showed that Gorstew was really responsible for a small portion of the overrun.

The Government side insisted that Mr. Hylton never submitted a report to the PM and that no such document was ever discussed by the Cabinet. Mr. Hylton, curiously, has kept quiet on the issue except for a letter sent to the UDC. However, a censure motion was brought by Donald Buchanan and was debated, ironically, on the same day Opposition Leader Bruce Golding spilled the Trafigura financing scandal that rocked the Government.

We felt at the time of its tabling, and still hold the view, that the censure motion was a puerile and ridiculous attempt at point-scoring - a way of hitting back for censure motions previously brought by the Opposition against ministers. Our sense is that what Mr. Hylton actually prepared were his notes and distillation of the various arguments on the Sandals Whitehouse controversy, which would have been sent to the various participants for comment. In that sense, it would not have been a formal report submitted to the Government.

If that was the case, it could have been simply explained, allowing the country to get on with serious business. Instead, in keeping with his cantankerous disposition and schoolboy tactics he displays in the House, Mr. Buchanan brought his censure motion. Surprisingly, the House leadership allowed him to push it through. This obvious pettiness has revealed itself to be a bad political tactic.

Nevertheless, Phillip Paulwell, the Commerce and Energy Minister, is now suing Opposition Leader Golding for defamation over the Trafigura issue. This may be a good test case for the press in which the persuasive House of Lords ruling in Jameel vs Wall Street Journal case would prove decisive.

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