We expect that Messrs Everald Warmington and Bobby Montague, junior ministers in Bruce Golding's administration, will, at the urging of the Prime Minister, apologise to the public for their insulting and contemptuous remarks to voters ahead of last week's local government elections.

Obligation fulfilled? Unfortunately, it will not have been. For whatever will have been said, it would merely be prescriptive, aimed at soothing political feathers and easing the embarrassment they have caused to Golding. Their apology, we believe, will not be genuine.

We have not come to this position without good reasons. It should be recalled that Golding's Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) came to office on the promise of good governance, having claimed 18 years of corrupt behaviour and abuse of public trust by its predecessor People's National Party (PNP) administration.

Indeed, Golding has long held himself out as the champion of a new inclusiveness, which would end the old notions that assumption of high office was the route to 'scarce benefits and spoils' for one's supporters.

Yet, in campaign statements for the municipal polls, Warmington told people at a rally in the town of Old Harbour that they would not receive hurricane-relief cheques unless they voted for his party. He said he had, in fact, advised the labour and social security minister, Pearnel Charles, not to distribute these cheques until after the vote.

Unfortunately, Charles, in his public reaction to the comment, preferred to dance around the issue rather than outrightly condemn Warmington's vulgar assault on the people's right.

But worse was the response of Delroy Chuck, who holds the lofty post of Speaker of the House and not so long ago was the shadow justice minister. Chuck at first defended Warmington before settling on an explanation of exuberance.

It would have been expected that given the furore over Warmington's bit of vulgarity, his political colleagues would be tempering, even for a while, any predilection to political excess.

But within days, Montague, the minister of state for local government, was threatening voters elsewhere with not repairing their roads unless they voted for his party.

Let's give both gentlemen the benefit of the doubt and assume that, in the heady environment of a political rally and with strong partisan support, they spoke out of turn; that they did not mean what they said. It would have been easy, in the circumstance, to quickly apologise, to offer a simple explanation. That, unhappily, was not the case.

For several days neither gentleman responded to the public criticism. And in Warmington's case, when he was asked about the call by the election monitoring group, CAFFE, for his resignation, his response, as reported on Saturday, was that CAFFE did not hire him, so they could not fire him. In other words, Mr. Warmington could not care less about the views of civil society.

At the official level, the leadership of the JLP and the government dithered over the issue, giving the impression that any eventual apology by Messrs. Montague and Warmington had to be the subject of negotiations between them and PM Golding.

In the event Golding's authority is being tested and called into question, so, too, is his adminis-tration's commitment to decent governance.