There may be, as we suggested yesterday, compelling and intellectually sound arguments to exempt what Mr Greg Christie has dubbed "the favoured four" from certain requirements of the Government Procurement Procedures Handbook.

Unfortunately, neither Prime Minister Golding nor his pointman on the issue, Mr Audley Shaw, the finance minister, has made them. The substance of the argument in favour of a self-regulation in the award of certain contracts by Air Jamaica, Jamaica Vacations, Jamaica Tourist Board and Petrojam is that they operate in special commercial areas and have to respond to the exigencies of their circumstance. Or, something like that.

But Mr Christie, the contractor general, whose office polices the award of government contracts, makes a very compelling case for circumspection on the part of the Golding administration in the public statements he issued this week. One of the points was an outline of the level of actual and perceived corruption in Jamaica and the context in which the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) was established in 1985.

Moreover, Mr Christie's chronology of the circumstance leading to the Cabinet's approval of the latest policy strongly supports his suspicion of a deliberate attempt to prevent the OCG from subjecting the proposals to rigorous analyses ahead of implementation.

What, in the end, has been achieved, Mr Christie believes, is to give some bureaucrats "an unfettered hand in spending taxpayers' money".

Indeed, the contractor general insists that commercial or other imperatives that might demand these entities to issue urgent contracts, could have been accommodated within the ambit of the existing procurement guidelines, with relatively minor adjustments to its emergency procedures.

This, Mr Christie says, would have ensured that the "probity and independent scrutiny of the procurements are secured".

If the Government has reasonable and sound counters to Mr Christie's arguments, it is not too late to bring them to the public sphere. Until then, it should suspend the finance ministry's circular 34 which, in Mr Christie's characterisation, "purports to exempt" the favoured four from the requirements of the procurement handbook.

New procurement rules

At the same time, we would suggest to Mr Christie that he test in the courts the bounds of the law establishing the OCG, including whether the administration has the authority to implement new procurement rules in the absence of full consultation with his office.

Indeed, nor do we feel it far-fetched for the public defender to pursue action on behalf of taxpayers, who have the constitutional right of protection against arbitrary and frivolous action by government, which will deprive them of the decent enjoyment of their property - their taxes. Moreover, both the public defender and the director of public prosecutions might want to consider whether this action is tantamount to misbehaviour in public office.

There are those who will claim these observations to be far-fetched. But, as Greg Christie has pointed out, significant issues are at stake.

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