FORMER contractor general Greg Christie says that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller should lead all aspiring parliamentarians in declaring her assets, income, and liabilities for public scrutiny amidst growing calls from her People’s National Party (PNP) for Opposition Leader Andrew Holness to lay bare his finances and details of the transactions for the house he is building in Beverly Hills, St Andrew.

In a series of

Twitter posts to his more than 17,000 followers over the weekend, Christie — an attorney who presided over the country’s public contracting processes from 2005 to 2012 — also released the results of a 24-hour poll he conducted on the topic via the social media platform, which show that a vast majority of the respondents supported his call.

The poll question, which was posted on Friday, asked: “The JA-PNP says the Opposition leader must disclose his finances. But should the PM lead and be the first? Have your say. Vote in this poll.”

The results — which were posted on Saturday and tagged to the accounts of Simpson Miller, Holness, finance minister and PNP campaign manager Dr Peter Phillips, and the National Integrity Action (NIA) watchdog group — showed that 93 per cent of the 220 respondents believed that Simpson Miller should lead the charge, while seven per cent said the Opposition leader should.

“There are 63 MPs (members of parliament) in JA (Jamaica). It can’t be that the ruling party compels the Opposition leader to disclose his assets while its own MPs are silent,” Christie reasoned in one post.

In another, he pointed out a flaw in the arguments put forward by the NIA, which also called for full disclosure from Holness.

“The law, #NIA, equally applies to 83 other JA parliamentarians. Shouldn’t you be asking questions of others as well?” Christie asked, in pointing out that senators, too, should be made to declare.

The former contractor general also posted several questions on transparency for the Government, in particular Phillips and Simpson Miller, to answer. These included whether Government of Jamaica officials, including Cabinet ministers, had acquired Finsac’d properties on concessionary terms. He also questioned why the finance minister has so far refused to allocate the $10 million needed to complete the report from the enquiry into the 1990s financial sector meltdown that happened while the PNP was in office. The enquiry began under the JLP Administration in 2009, but was officially halted when the PNP took over the reins of power in 2012.

Other questions asked by Christie concerned whether the finance minister was prepared to call for the immediate publication of the assets of the prime minister and all Cabinet ministers, including himself; how many Government officials had been prosecuted for failing to declare their assets; and what action has been taken by the prime minister against officers who have committed breaches.

The controversy over Holness’s house, which began early last year, took a wild turn last week when the PNP signalled that it would not participate in any debate leading up to the February 25 General Election if Holness did not provide answers to several questions surrounding the transactions for his house within seven days.

The questions were contained in a full-page newspaper advertisement and repeated by Phillips while chairing a PNP press conference at the party’s Old Hope Road headquarters in Kingston last Friday.

But members of the public, private sector and civil society groups, including the NIA, have taken issue with the PNP’s usage of the issues as an excuse to stay away from the leadership debates.

The JLP and members of the public have also criticised the PNP for using the issues as an attempt to shield the prime minister from scrutiny.

Christie, meanwhile, shared his own view on the impasse.

“The Jamaican electorate is entitled to hear from those who seek to represent it as servants. A reluctance to debate is therefore untenable,” he tweeted.