Prime Minister Bruce Golding is scheduled, this morning, to deliver what could be among the most defining speeches of his public life when he addresses a seminar on press freedom and corruption prevention. If he grasps the opportunity this could be a seminal contribution to the cause of decent governance and go some way towards repairing his image after his ham-fisted handling of the Solicitor General affair.

The perception of Jamaica, domestically and abroad, is that it is a very corrupt place. Mr Golding's party had, for years, made the corruption issue a central plank of its campaign.

Now in office, he has not let go. While the Government has, on the face of it, pursued claims of graft against its predecessor administration, it has been keen to extract political mileage from the issues. The investigation into seemingly exorbitant payments for the delivery of energy-saving bulbs to Jamaican communities and the invitation of the Dutch authorities to follow up on the $30 million 'gift' to the People's National Party, when it formed the government, are cases in point.

Clearly, however, corruption is a debilitating tax on society. It robs communities of resources that should go to their development and weakens the moral authority of those who govern to insist on citizens' contribution and responsibility to the overall good of the society. It is often in this environment that antisocial behaviour thrives.

The press, in its evolved and mutually accepted role as the community's watchdog against excesses and arbitrariness on the part of governors, has an important role in this fight against corruption. But, just how well it can play this role is often circumscribed by the constraints, often legal, placed within the environment in which it roams. The defamation laws, that particularly place the burden on the press to prove that actions are not libellous, are often a chilling deterrent to the pursuit of truth, especially in small, weak economies where even a relatively small award of damages could wipe out a newspaper or radio station.

Happily, Mr. Golding seems not only to appreciate this but is moving on a promise, made while in Opposition, to do something about it. He has named a commission, chaired by Justice Hugh Small, to review the defamation laws and to make recommendations for their amendment.

Mr. Golding will, hopefully, remind Justice Small's commission to be liberal in its deliberations and to formulate proposals that will allow the press to help the society hold public officials to a high standard of accountability, without having to be so acutely aware of the dangers to its survival.

In that regard, these deliberations should have as their backdrop the philosophical position of one of the presenters at today's forum, the Anguillan/Antiguan lawyer, Bernice Lake.

At a seminar here, four years ago, she made the point that when an individual signals his intention to enter public life he implicitly signals an acceptance of a diminution of privacy. Having made the plunge, that acceptance becomes explicit, so a public official should not expect the same protection as a private citizen.

Said Ms Lake: " ... [ In] the world of politics and pubic affairs, freedom of expression is paramount and the rights to privacy and protection of reputations are subordinated in the interest of the public."