Bush expects ‘incompetent’ ODPP to try him again

(CNS): McKeeva Bush MP expects the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to continue the case against him over allegations he indecently assaulted two women at a cocktail party almost two years ago. He has told CNS that he also believes the office, which he described as “incompetent”, may also appeal against the court order that stopped the trial earlier this year due to an abuse of process.

Bush has cancelled two public meetings he planned to hold about a commission of inquiry he intends to ask for as he waits to see what will happen.

A gag order on a ruling by Justice Stanley John that was imposed after the indecent assault trial collapsed last year was lifted on Wednesday, which gives the ODPP the green light to press ahead with charges against Bush.

The judge stayed the trial because he found that the legal system was being abused in relation to one of the complainants in the case. He found that important information had been withheld from Bush’s legal team that should have been disclosed. He also found that one of the women who was allegedly assaulted and Cabinet Secretary Sam Rose had both been pressured into giving evidence against Bush when they did not want to.

After the ruling was unveiled yesterday, Bush told CNS that the whole thing was a demonstration of the “worst incompetence I have ever come across” and that he believed the inappropriate pressure on witnesses was coming directly from the governor’s office.

He said Governor Martyn Roper (the current governor’s immediate predecessor) had demanded that he resign as speaker the morning after the cocktail party where the alleged assault took place “before anyone knew what had really gone on”.

Bush said he was very concerned about the people who had approached the cabinet secretary, as documented in the judge’s ruling, to give evidence against him even though Rose had not been at the event. Bush doesn’t believe that any members of the press, including this CNS reporter and the owner of Cayman Marl Road, had pressured Rose but thought it was probably the governor and his political rivals.

However, Bush’s main concern is what he sees as direct interference in the justice system by a series of governors, including Roper in the most recent cases against him but stretching back to Duncan Taylor in relation to allegations of corruption over the misuse of his government credit card, for which he was acquitted in 2014.

Bush had called for a commission of inquiry into the abuse of the prosecution process at that time, but this had not happened. He has now repeated that call and was planning to hold two public meetings about it, one on Thursday evening in George Town and one in West Bay on Saturday. However, when he spoke with CNS this week, he said he had cancelled both meetings.

Bush is filing a private member’s motion calling for a commission of inquiry into what he believes is the inappropriate and direct interference in the cases against him and the abuse of the process by the governor’s office.

He said the independence of the ODPP was essential “as the country needs to be properly served by prosecutors”. However, he is questioning that independence and has suggested the British have been coming for him for years. “We don’t need this kind of interference,” he said, adding that he believes other people have also been wrongly prosecuted due to incompetence and inappropriate interference.

However, following the ruling and in light of his belief that the ODPP will come after him again, he said he was holding off on the calls for a public inquiry.

Though he has not yet heard anything from the ODPP, Bush said he is expecting that it will seek a new trial, at the very least in relation to the two counts on the original indictment that are no longer stayed by the court. He believes the director may also seek to appeal the counts for which the Order of Stay remains, even though the witness in question has said multiple times she does not believe what Bush did to her, though “creepy and weird”, amounted to a crime.

“I’m a politician, and I hear things, and I have heard they are considering it,” he said about the possibility that he will be re-tried on all four counts. “If they are foolish enough to spend public money for a retrial when there are so many other things we need it for, then so let them… The truth will come out.”

Bush has protested his innocence, even denying he was drunk, and has repeated his position that the cases against him are not based on real evidence but are politically motivated. He said this was demonstrated by how the ODPP had pursued this case against him when at least one of the witnesses, if not both in the first instance, had made it very clear she did not think Bush had done anything wrong.

He claimed that the ruling had not been kept under wraps to protect him and prevent potential bias in the rape case against him that ended in his acquittal on Monday but rather to prevent possible accusations of bias directed at the prosecutor, given that the ruling makes it very clear the director and some staff at the ODPP had deliberately abused and corrupted the system.

Bush said the ODPP was “trying to lessen the impact of their losses” in their pursuit of him, and this was another reason why they would probably try to pursue the indecent assault charges again.