The props are now nearly all in place for the next grand roil, which, like those of the past, we expect to fuel the animus and distractions that will make necessary political consensus on critical economic and social issues exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, in the near term.

Last weekend, the Ministry of Finance announced that the secretariat of the commission of enquiry into the collapse of Jamaica's financial sector during the 1990s would be launched tomorrow, ahead of hearings starting in July. That commission will be chaired by retired judge, Justice Boyd Carey, and includes as members chartered accountant Worrick Bogle and Charles Ross, the managing director of the investment house, Sterling Asset Management. Fernando DePeralto, a former deputy of the Bank of Jamaica, will serve as its secretary.

Terms of reference

The terms of reference of the commission is substantial and complex, including an examination of how the economic policies of the Government of the day may have driven the crisis; what might have been done differently; and the appropriateness of how the Government intervened to shore up the financial sector.

The commission has also been asked, among a raft of other things, to examine the probity with which the managers of FINSAC, the vehicle used by the Government for the intervention, behaved and how the agency to which FINSAC sold non-performing assets has treated delinquent borrowers.

There is little doubt that the events of a decade ago have been painful and expensive to many individuals who lost their assets and to the country as a whole. Taxpayers, after all, had to fork out over $140 billion to bail out bank depositors and pension funds, a move which provides a critical marker in the uncontrolled spiral in the country's debt, which is now around 118 per cent of gross domestic product.

But even as we understand the hurt of those individuals who lost assets and pressed for this enquiry, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the commission can - certainly not in its current form - produce much more than an intensely partisan political wrangle in a semi-judicial setting.

Its terms of reference is overburdened, structured, by design or otherwise, to create political fault lines over economic policies, about which there can be legitimate differences about which there has been much debate. The upshot will be people defending their actions while others seek to highlight just how copious were past failures.

We foresee an absence of clarity as all players strive for vindication.

Rather than taking place between protagonists in a semi-judicial setting, a review of the economic policies of the period would better be left to academics and analysts whose insights would inform current and future policy.

If, indeed, people acted with an absence of probity and/or were outrightly corrupt in the acquisition, sale or disposal of assets, the Government has legal remedies that are likely to be far more efficient and effectively justiciable than parading the claims at a commission of enquiry. Moreover, if an administration deems specific contracts relating to the management of FINSAC assets were not in the interest of the country, it has the executive authority to review those agreements and, if or where permissible, to abrogate them.

Such action is more likely to stir the partisan base and may well descend into a big standpipe-type quarrel at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel before the venerable commissioners.

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