Sea Breeze MP Carl Bethel and Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell clashed in the House of Assembly yesterday over Mitchell's decision to sue a public servant who allegedly accused him of being complicit in wrongdoing while he was minister of foreign affairs.
The argument began after Bethel questioned why Mitchell sued Dorothea Lafleur, an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Consular Division, for allegedly telling an American diplomat back in 2007 that the former minister 'pressured' staff at the ministry to issue visas to 'ineligible' Chinese applicants.
The allegations were contained in a secret U.S. Embassy cable that was published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks and tabled in the Senate by Labour Minister Dion Foulkes a few weeks ago.
Bethel said it was curious that Mitchell did not sue him for making similar allegations back in 2007.
"It is interesting that the member for Fox Hill has made a public show of having sued a public servant in respect to comments that public servant may have made or may not have made," said Bethel as he contributed to debate on the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill.
"That's for the courts and I don't take from him the right to do that, but I do know one thing, everything the public servant said I was all over this country saying for months. I had the documents, everything she said, but I didn't get sued.
"It is amazing that you can sue a public servant but don't sue the person who broke the news. Chinese visas, politicians involved, the applicants were unqualified and the question of whether there was political interference, those were hot issues around this town. No one got sued for them but the public servant now gets sued?"
Bethel said he raised the point of Mitchell's lawsuit because a clause in the FOI Bill protects whistleblowers from legal action, if the information they provide is deemed libelous.
Mitchell said in the House
of Assembly he was surprised that Bethel raised the issue since the matter is currently before the courts.
He added that Bethel knew that he denied the accusations when they were first raised in 2007 and said the charges were deemed baseless by a subsequent police investigation.
"The member is well aware that [matter] was dealt with politically at the time, the matter was investigated by the police at the time, two reports were filed, and the member fell silent," Mitchell
However, Bethel shot back: "I only saw the police report generated as a result of the complaints that I was making when I read it on a website.
"The police never had the courtesy to send a copy to me. I was shocked when I read the document on the website and I could never understand...how a complaint about the political interference on the issuance of visas to unqualified Chinese became an investigation into officials giving visas to Haitians."
At this point Mitchell jumped to his feet.
"No sir. No sir. No sir," Mitchell shouted, as he pointed a finger in Bethel's direction. "Not in here today."
"You raised it," Bethel answered.
Both men remained on their feet shouting at each other until Speaker of the House Alvin Smith quieted them.
In February, Mitchell filed a lawsuit against Lafleur. In a police report filed as supporting documentation for the lawsuit, police found evidence of an alleged cash for visa scam with Haitians.
Lafleur and another person were identified as the facilitators of this alleged scheme, according to the police report.

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