EDITORIAL - Special prosecutor good for democracy

The prima facie evidence suggests that Jamaica remains as corrupt under the Golding administration as under his predecessor. Or, perhaps more to the point, corruption, both in fact and perception, is deeply entrenched in Jamaica, requiring strong action to root it out.

A recent study by researchers at the University of the West Indies, Mona, found that 81 per cent of Jamaicans perceive their country, and especially its public officials, to be corrupt.

"Jamaica is virtually at the top of the chart, registering the second-highest level of citizens' lack of confidence in the integrity of elected and other public officials among these countries," noted the researchers.

This distrust of public officials doesn't end there. It translates to a lack of faith in state institutions and diminished support for democracy.

For example, that same survey indicated that only 40 per cent of Jamaicans believed the Government to be a credible institution, a slump of eight percentage points over two years.

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Trust in the country's Parliament was no better, and that in political parties even worse - 33 per cent, or a drop of nine percentage points in 2008.

Perhaps more worrying is how all this impacted on people's feelings towards democracy: 70 per cent, measured by Jamaicans' embrace of the concept on a scale of one to seven, support democracy as an ideal. But that figure was seven percentage points lower than two years earlier. The majority (56 per cent) were dissatisfied with how democracy worked in Jamaica.

In the context of the weak support for most other institutions - the press apart - the army was the most trusted in Jamaica.

We have reiterated this data to underline the crisis of confidence faced by Jamaica, the dangers this poses for our democracy, and the urgent need for our institutions to reform themselves if they are to avert their further weakening and, ultimately, collapse.

This is why this newspaper supports the law to establish a special prosecutor for corrupt public officials that is now being debated in Parliament, which we fear is in danger of being watered down.

The proposed law - which will bring under a single umbrella the policing of the behaviour of parliamentarians and other public officials - does not go far enough, although we understand some of the constraints.

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For instance, the powers of the special prosecutor remain secondary to those of the director of the public prosecutions (DPP), a creature of the Constitution who has final powers to start, intervene in or discontinue prosecutions. Amending the Constitution to give the special prosecutor authority equal to that of the DPP would, at this time, be politically difficult.

However, the Office of the Contractor General, with the present head, Mr Greg Christie, leading the new entity, should have also been collapsed into this new agency. And it is a pity that there will not be greater transparency to the integrity filings by public officials.

This, however, is a start which whingeing parliamentarians, who claim it to be too intrusive, should embrace if they wish Jamaica to be more than a limping approximation of a democracy. It is part of a process of rekindling trust.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.