Editorial | Ethics, conflict of interest training for public officials

Daryl Vaz, who, de facto, is the minister for the environment, shouldn’t have withdrawn his bid to lease 7.7 acres of Jamaica’s protected Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park only because of the position he holds. He should have done so because it was the right thing to do, and because the offer should, in the first place, neither have been made nor entertained.

And perchance it was never done, or perhaps done and forgotten, the episode suggests that Prime Minister Andrew Holness should have ethicists engage his ministers and senior public officials on what is acceptable behaviour in their jobs, including what counts as conflict of interest and how to avoid such conflicts, or the appearance of conflict. The guide should be publicly available. This ought to be useful to Minister Vaz.

Mr Holness, de jure, is the minister of economic growth and job creation, a super ministry that encompasses most government agencies whose decisions/actions impact economic development. These include agencies responsible for environmental and spatial management, including the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and the National Land Agency (NLA). It is Mr Vaz, an influential member of the Government, who effectively runs the ministry.

HERITAGE SITE

The Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park, spread over 101,000 acres, with several endemic, and endangered, species of flora and fauna, is a UNESCO Heritage Site. It is managed on behalf of NEPA and the Government’s cultural agencies by the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust (JCDT), a non-profit non-governmental organisation. The Government and UNESCO provide 30 per cent of the annual budget for maintaining the park. The JCDT raises the rest from international and domestic donors, and from income earned by operating a long-standing recreational area and hiking trail at Holywell, in the buffer zone of the protected park, which, also, is where Mr Vaz wanted to lease land, until it leaked, becoming a public controversy.

According to Mr Vaz, he intended to build a cottage for Airbnb rental, but withdrew the lease offer having learned of opposition to his plan, which, ostensibly, came from the JCDT, although it was not officially consulted on the deal. Mr Vaz pulled back, he said, only because of his ministerial position.

He, however, accused the JCDT’s managers of hypocrisy, basing his claim on the fact that the trust previously constructed a lodge at Holywell, which, as the group noted, also houses a cafeteria and a museum. Mr Vaz clearly missed the point.

The Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park and the Holywell recreational area represent a unique biodiversity that is of universal value to mankind, which is to be maintained as an inheritance to the people of Jamaica. Which is why the park is on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, with the expectation that it will be managed with fealty to that trust. Private commercial control and exploitation of any portion of the park would make that undertaking difficult to guarantee.

Then there is the matter of when Minister Vaz attempted to lease the land, which gave the appearance of his public duty clashing with his private interests, especially given the seeming absence of transparency with which the deal was initially being handled. There, too, is the fact that Mr Vaz has oversight for both NEPA and NLA, as well as various other agencies and departments with which he would have interfaced on the intended project.

We appreciate that people’s private lives, and economic interests, don’t end when they enter government. However, the acceptance of public office, and being guardians of public resources, assumes a public official’s pursuance of broader interests, opening him to a greater level of accountability, which may demand, during his period of office, limiting personal economic ambitions. Indeed, as much as possible, public officials should avoid being placed in positions of conflict of interest, or the perception thereof.