There are not too many people who might know or recall the name Joseph Burey. He died earlier this decade, just as he was entering early middle age. At the time, Joseph Burey was a teacher at Wolmer's Boys' School. Outwardly, he was a quietly decent; but inwardly, he was a broken man.

Two decades earlier, as a young man, recently out of university, Joseph Burey appeared to have a promising career in Jamaica's foreign service. The Cold War was still very much in vogue, though, and Jamaica was engaged in it.

One day, it was broadcast from Gordon House, the Jamaican Parliament, that Joseph Burey had been implicated in a plot - involving Cuban journalists and Russian diplomats based in Jamaica - to commit murder. The foreigners were expelled. No charges were ever brought against Mr Burey; nothing was ever proved. The spying allegations just drifted away over the years.

Constitutional immunity

Mr Burey never sued for defamation. For, even if the allegations were untrue, he couldn't. Section 48 (3) of the Constitution provides parliamentarians immunity against prosecution, civil or criminal, for statements made in the legislature - no matter how outrageous those remarks are.

This privilege is afforded legislators because, it is held, their discourse on the country's affairs on policies to the public good should not be fettered by fear of legal action. The potential hurt to Joseph Burey or other private individuals in that regard is acceptable "collateral damage" in the larger pursuit of the people's interest.

Yet, neither the private individual nor the press, in the case of the latter as proxy watchdog for the community over the handling by Government of their affairs, enjoys such immunity in their review of the conduct of public officials. It would seem to us, as has been eloquently argued by the Anguillan-Antiguan attorney Bernice Lake, that the legal plane from which the free press, and by extension the society, can interrogate those whom they entrust with high office and the management of public resources, should be substantially extended.

No meaningful participation

"There can be no meaningful participation in the fashioning of the nation's affairs unless the conduct of those who direct our affairs can be held up to public scrutiny without inordinate trepidation," Ms Lake remarked at a seminar in Jamaica earlier in this decade.

Bernice Lake's observation was in the context of the pervasiveness of government, its potential for intrusion into people's lives, and the special burden of accountability this ought to place on the public. In that regard, the same standards for the protection of privacy, and even reputation, that adhere for the private citizen ought not to apply to people in the political sphere.

Said Ms Lake: "In a climate in which entrenched rights are so readily impacted by the public conduct of public officials, the citizenry by themselves, or through the media as the first line of defence, must have the privilege to comment on the public conduct of the citizens' business, or the suitability of persons to discharge those public functions. In so doing, reputations of public officers can be readily engaged and may be exposed to comments based upon inaccuracies."

We hope that Prime Minister Golding and the Parliament agree. If they don't, they can claim no right, and ought to surrender that which they have, to cause damage, collateral or otherwise, to the Joseph Bureys of the world.

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