By Jenni Campbell
Contributor
Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert is no pup. She entered representational politics in 2007, a full-grown adult, a wife, and an attorney-at-law with years of service under her belt. She is the mother of four strong adult children and a well-seasoned attorney to boot.
Years of experience and the sheer pressures of facing down the daily challenges of life, law, and politics ought to have taught Marisa wisdom.
As it was for so many before her, so shall it be for others to come—hard-won achievements can be easily marred with spurious flirtations. Especially in public office, one must seek to be righteously rooted and buttressed with Godly wisdom.
Wisdom, the Scriptures assure, is a feature of the aged.
A super wise king by the name of Solomon sought the expertise of older men who helped him to make important decisions about the kingdom of Israel.
When the chairman of the House of Representatives is hauled, kicking and screaming, before the court of public opinion and is forced to tender her resignation with immediate effect, it is disgraceful, indecent, and embarrassingly ugly.
Marisa is not the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in Jamaica. She did not need to look far for excellent examples from both sides of the aisle to follow. She could have planted her feet in the footsteps of those who served beyond party lines, ruled righteously, and retired with their reputations for fairness and putting country above self in tact.
In her season, Marisa has had a fair share of entanglements with the law and agencies of legal and moral authority. She entered the public arena with much fanfare, in the dying embers of chapter one of Jamaica’s celebrated experiment with a woman at the helm of government. Women in leadership had taken a major boost between 2006 and 2007, so it was not surprising that, although new to Gordon House, Dalrymple-Philibert, a good lawyer and woman of substance, was immediately elevated to Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives (2007-2011).
Since her arrival at Gordon House in 2007, Marisa has not left. She has sat comfortably on both sides of the lower chamber, adding her voice to many legislations that have passed, and her well-manicured hands have vigorously pounded desks as required.
On July 12, 2011, Marisa became the 15th Speaker of the House of Representatives, succeeding Delroy Chuck, who had been appointed Minister of Justice. This was significant as she became the second woman to occupy this position after Violet Neilson of the PNP (1997-2003).
Her performance in this role was again rewarded on September 15, 2020, when she was named as Speaker of the House of Representatives for the second time, following the retirement of Pearnel Charles Sr.
Her position as a top legislator did not spare her from falling under the scrutiny of the erudite General Legal Council (GLC), the state entity that regulates the legal profession in Jamaica.
Jamaicans were shocked when news broke that she was being investigated in a case of professional misconduct brought against her by some of the children of the late Clinton Clarke regarding what they perceived as improprieties with their father’s estate.
Two years ago, Jamaicans were again dumbfounded when Marisa, along with her son and gardener, were hauled before the court in a case of illegal dumping. As the chief legislator, being charged under the National Solid Waste Management Act of 2001, which was passed in the very House over which she was to twice preside, (albeit, six years before her arrival), smacks of blatant disregard for the very laws crafted with the expectation that others will hold them sacrosanct. While there was no denial of dumping garbage by the roadside near Salem, St Ann, on August 15, 2021, by Marisa et al, the attorneys-at-law, Peter Champagnie and Tom Tavares-Finson, representing the trio, said that their clients should not have been charged but rather ticketed for the offence. The case was eventually dismissed.
Having spent 17 years in the House of Representatives, having represented south Trelawny, a troubled constituency that has seen some of the most heinous murders and criminal operations, having overcome political rivals in various forms, shapes and experiences, Marisa, a woman who is no stranger to controversies, is referred for prosecution for not declaring a motor vehicle purchase amounting to $6 million in her annual statutory declarations to the Integrity Commission. This breach had been active for a number of years after the acquisition of the vehicle.
She has contended that it was an oversight, and not a deliberate false declaration on her part. However, the Integrity Commission ruled that she is to be charged in relation to ‘false’ statements she made in her statutory declarations filed over the period 2015 to 2021.
After much public pressure from the Opposition, the church, and others, Marisa heeded and resigned as Speaker of the House of Representatives and Member of Parliament for South Trelawny, with immediate effect. She blamed ‘reputational damage from the charges’ for her decision to demit office.
In a pre-departure statement, Marisa said she has spent time reflecting on the report and noted that the Integrity Commission did not raise questions about the funding of the vehicle.
She maintained that “the omission of the vehicle was a genuine oversight on my part”, adding that there would have been no allegations against her name had she included the vehicle in her declaration, which is something she had no motive to deliberately omit.
Whether deliberate or otherwise, Marisa has many other lingering matters to address if she is to scrub her legacy clean.
She was the Speaker of the House when Jamaica was busy maintaining its position as the fifth most corrupt country in the Caribbean behind Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. She occupied the Speaker’s chair while there is an active investigation into illicit enrichment among members of the House. She held the gavel while the integrity filing of the Prime Minister remains uncleared.
Having been placed in a key position to uphold the loftiest ideals of good governance and statesmanship for her country, and having spent nearly 17 years in representational politics, Marisa is leaving with more questions over her name and legacy in many respects than when she first arrived.
Despite this, Jamaica is facing a raft of problems greater than Marisa. The general conduct of the political class in our country is woefully disheartening. The glaring absence of truth, vision and age-old wisdom in too many instances is alarming.
We need to reboot and restart. This time, let us do it with true wisdom from above. It begins with the fear of God.