Arnold Joseph ‘AJ’ Nicholson, the colourful leader of Government Business in the Senate and foreign minister in the former People’s National Party (PNP) Administration, has said farewell after 27 years in representational politics.
Nicholson, a staunch ally of former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, told his leader a polite but hesitant ‘no’, Jamaica Observer sources said, when she offered to keep him on the Opposition benches in the Senate, where his booming voice and penchant for strident debate were familiar features of Friday afternoons on Duke Street.
“It was an immense honour and privilege for me to have served in leadership for so many years and to represent Jamaica in Government,” Nicholson said when contacted by the Sunday Observer.
“I am moving now into a new direction in my life and career, where I will have the opportunity to spend more time with my family, return to the international lecture circuit and to the Bar,” he disclosed.
“Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to interact with some of Jamaica’s finest professionals within the civil service,“ he said.
“I am grateful for all the help they have given me in delivering on my various portfolio responsibilities. I will always recall their kindness, proficiency and industry in their various areas of work.”
The Bar includes a return to regional courts where Nicholson is remembered in legal circles for membership on the team of Jamaicans who defended the Grenada 17 accused of the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and three of his ministers – the event that led to a United States invasion of the tiny eastern Caribbean island in October 1983.
Nicholson’s decision not to continue in the Senate comes in the wake of the excruciatingly tiny 32 to 31 seats defeat by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) over the PNP in the February 25 General Election which took place three days before his 74th birthday.
Born in Rock River, Clarendon, Nicholson attended Excelsior School in 1953 and did a brief stint at the Income Tax Department before enrolling, in 1961, at University College of the West Indies, later renamed University of the West Indies (UWI), where he read for a degree in economics.
At UWI he was heavily influenced by the late great cricketer Frank Worrell, later attributing his passion for regionalism to Sir Frank.
That passion would gain flight in the fight for the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) when he served as deputy chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the establishment of the CCJ from 1995 to 2007.
Nicholson garnered experience as an accountant by Barclays Bank in London and returned to Jamaica to become the first Jamaican to be hired by the first Jamaican bank, Jamaica Citizens Bank, at its establishment.
A black power advocate, his disillusionment with racism at the bank, which was partowned by Americans, led him to pursue law in England.
He was called to the Bar at Middle Temple Inn of Court, London, in 1971 and had the distinction of being appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1995. Nicholson worked and learnt at the feet of the late Ian Ramsay, one of the undisputed icons of legal history in Jamaica.
Among his numerous cases were celebrated trials such as the Green Bay trial, in which several young men were allegedly lured to their deaths by soldiers; the Claudie Massop case featuring the killing by police of the feared Tivoli strongman; and the trial of Charles Johnson for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Michael Manley Government in the heady 1970s.
Nicholson entered representational politics in 1989, winning the hotly disputed St Andrew West Central seat now occupied by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
He retained the seat in the 1993 General Election which marked the return of PJ Patterson to political dominance at the head of the PNP. Patterson appointed him minister of legal affairs from 1995 to 1998 and he served as minister of justice from 2001 to 2007.
During that 12-year period he was attorney general. Upon Simpson Miller’s return to power in 2012, he was appointed minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade.
“I would like to pay respectful tribute to the (three) prime ministers who placed such faith in me over the years, as well as my party and ministerial colleagues,” he noted.
Nicholson also served as a member of the executive of the Council of Legal Education; and a member of Caricom’s General Legal Council, Jamaica.
He was a Distinguished International Fellow of Stetson University College of Law at Gulfport, Florida, for a three-year term from 2009.
In addition to working at the regional Bar, the former minister said he was “looking forward to publishing some of my writings, chronicling my life’s work and various experiences”
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