EDITORIAL: Caught, Mr Warmington

It is so, and notoriously known to be so, that when it comes to rendering and distributing pork, politicians disdain accountability and oversight.

That is why for two years the parliamentary committee that 'reviews' the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) held its meetings in secret, and why its chairman and still a sitting member of the House, Mr Everald Warmington, had to be prodded and dragged, largely by this newspaper, into transparency.

Coincidental with the committee's opening has been the leakage of minutes from meetings during its secret days, with startling revelations about how it worked, the attitude of its members and a compelling case for its work to be done in the light of day.

There was, for example, the matter of the retroactive approval of a $1.3-million contract agreed to by People's National Party parliamentarian, Natalie Neita-Headley, for road repairs in her East St Central St Catherine constituency, even though that amount of money was not available to her and she had breached the fund's procurement rules. That issue, having come to public attention, is being investigated by the Office of the Contractor General (OCG).

What we glean from this issue, and others like it, is that the scraping and scrambling to keep the doors of the committee shut and away from the inquisitive eyes of journalists was not simply an act of hubris. There were other defined intents.

Mr Warmington's own words, according to minutes obtained by this newspaper, let the cat out of the bag, or more effectively displayed the pig on the 'creng creng', that Jamaican mechanism for preparing meat, usually pork, over a smoking fire.

attempts at barring the OCG

The OCG polices the Government's procurement rules and investigates contracts entered into by its ministries, agencies and departments. Representatives of the OCG have apparently attended meetings, as observers, of the supposed CDF monitoring unit in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Mr Warmington was unhappy with this, particularly since the contractor general from time to time still asked questions about procurement under the CDF. So, Mr Warmington would prefer that the OCG's staff be excluded from these meetings.

"There is nowhere in the guidelines that requires him (the contractor general) to be there, so just bar him," said Mr Warmington.

As we have observed before, when it comes to embracing pork and slithering in its fat, there is common cause across the party divide among politicians as a species. It is understandable, therefore, that Mr Warmington had support from Mr Derrick Kellier, an Opposition member of parliament (MP), who happens also to be the leader of opposition business in the House.

"I would wish to retroactively agree with you, because I had said it from the beginning, that he had no place there," said Mr Kellier. Even more, the Opposition MP would have preferred that the OCG not be mentioned at all at meetings of the parliamentary committee, on the basis, it seems, that all of that office's issues should have already been aired at the sessions of the monitoring unit.

Like Mrs Neita-Headley, no one wants the OCG's oversight of the 'creng creng'. Indeed, we recall Mrs Neita-Headley's declaration of her willingness to personally repay CDF money rather than have the OCG probe her case.

Here's a better suggestion: scrap the CDF.

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