Jamaican prime minister Bruce Golding has narrowly survived a no-confidence motion in parliament after the opposition urged him to resign because of his alleged support of a suspected drug lord wanted by the United States.
On a 30-28 vote late yesterday, lawmakers rejected a motion to censure Mr Golding for his handling of a US extradition request for Christopher "Dudus" Coke, the reputed drug kingpin.
Coke, a supporter of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, has wielded influence over the volatile inner-city constituency that Mr Golding represents. Coke is wanted in New York on charges that he smuggled cocaine and marijuana along with weapons between Jamaica and the United States.
Mr Golding and his political allies opposed the extradition request for nine months before bowing to US pressure to arrest Coke and begin extradition proceedings against him.
Coke remains a fugitive after security forces clashed with his suspected gang member supporters in the capital last week in violence that killed at least 73 civilians.
Most of the bloodshed occurred on May 24th when heavily armed police and soldiers stormed the Tivoli Gardens slum that served as a bastion of support for Coke.
Tivoli Gardens is also a stronghold of the Jamaica Labour Party and helped propel Mr
Golding, who represents it in parliament, to victory in general elections in September 2007.
The opposition People's National Party brought the no-confidence motion against the prime minister because he allegedly misrepresented the facts surrounding the US extradition request for Coke.
"Something is rotten in the state of Jamaica," opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller, a former prime minister, said in the debate calling for him to step down.
She was referring specifically to Mr Golding's recent acknowledgment, after an earlier denial, that he had sanctioned the ruling party's hiring of a US law firm to lobby against the US extradition request for Coke.
In his own defence in parliament on Tuesday, Mr Golding reiterated an earlier apology over the matter and said he regretted that the Labour Party had ever gotten involved or contacted the US law firm, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
US prosecutors have described Coke as the leader of the dreaded "Shower Posse," which murdered hundreds of people by showering them with bullets during 1980s cocaine wars.
Though he remains at large, officials said late on Tuesday that Leighton Coke, his brother, had handed himself in to police earlier in the day.
Reuters