- Winston Sill Former National Democratic Movement (NDM) chairman, Bruce Golding, listens attentively to Dr. Carolyn Gomes, chairperson of Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), during the human rights body's weekly meeting on Thursday at the Stella Maris auditorium in St. Andrew.

FORMER NATIONAL Democratic Movement (NDM) president, Bruce Golding, has criticised the Government for having an "appetite for hanging."

He said that there was enough reason to suspect the administration was wilfully trying to manoeuvre the Constitution to counter the United Kingdom Privy Council's decisions against hanging.Mr. Golding's comments came only a day after Amnesty International accused the Government of promising to resume hanging as a bait for votes in the upcoming general election.

In attacking the People's National Party's (PNP) election manifesto, the former NDM president said the administration's penchant to resume the death penalty would not significantly reduce crime.

In 1993, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that it was inhumane to hang convicts who had been mprisoned for more than five years. The conditions on death row were also cited as a factor in the Privy Council's decision.

The last hanging occurred in Jamaica in 1988 when two murder convicts were hanged at the St. Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town.

But, with the general election fast approaching, the Government on Monday, at the launch of its manifesto, said it would be resuming hanging if re-elected, an apparent ploy to appease the electorate in a year that has so far seen 689 persons being killed violently.

'WILL NOT AFFECT CRIME'

The PNP manifesto also promised to amend the Constitution, so that the Governor-General's prerogative of mercy could not be subjected to judicial review, which means a condemned person will not be entitled to an oral hearing.

"In my view, what this reflects is an appetite for hanging which is not going to have any significant effect on crime, but will provide some kind of therapy to a society that has been so battered by the high crime level, that they are in the state of anxiety," Mr. Golding told a meeting of Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) at the Stella Maris auditorium in St. Andrew.

He said the present Government has consistently shown tendencies to defy rulings of a final appeal court.

Mr. Golding's address to the human rights lobby group also touched on the controversial Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

"If we even abolish the right of appeal to the Privy Council and we establish our own CCJ, and that court was to make the mistake of a ruling that the Government of Jamaica is not happy with, then we simply go and amend the Constitution to take care of the Caribbean Court of Justice as well," he said.

He added that if Jamaica has a final appeal court that is supposed to be independent, the Government must be prepared to accepts its ruling even when they aren't favourable to the administration.

"I don't know which court can sit in confidence, if it doesn't know whether or not the Government was going to make some amendment to the Constitution that would limit its jurisdiction and, therefore, whether a final court is not going to be influenced in its decisions by what possible legislative action a Government would take if a Government is unhappy with that decision," Mr. Golding said.