EDITORIAL - Good days against corruption,but not yet time for the bubbly

First, there were Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis' revelations of the scandalous management of the Government's flagship road construction and repair project that led to the sacking of the head of the National Works Agency (NWA), Mr Patrick Wong, and Prime Minister Andrew Holness' wrestling of the programme away from the transport and works minister, Mike Henry. We suspect that the fallout from the managerial malfeasance related to this multibillion-dollar Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) is not yet over.

Then, in an unprecedented development, six parliamentarians either pleaded guilty or were convicted of failing, within the stipulated time, to provide additional information about their assets and liabilities to the Parliamentary Integrity Commission. Each was fined J$10,000.

The week was topped with a separate conviction of Mr Wong for a past failure, unrelated to his current troubles, to provide requested information to the Office of the Contractor General during an investigation. He was fined, as is provided by the Contractor General Act, J$5,000 or three months - a penalty that must be hiked significantly to become a more effective deterrent.

hard road ahead

While this newspaper welcomes these developments, believing that they signal important advances towards a higher quality of governance in Jamaica, we wouldn't advise anti-corruption campaigners to become overly celebratory as yet. For there is still a hard road ahead with many obstacles in the way. We infer, though, that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is now likely to be more enthusiastically engaged in supporting existing anti-corruption agencies that have in the past complained of its seeming lethargy.

Patrick Wong's conviction, in this regard, may well be metaphor and catalyst.

Contractor General Greg Christie, especially, has been openly and harshly critical of DPP Paula Llewellyn's failure to prosecute public officials and others, who, he felt, had breached the law by failing to provide requisitioned information or giving false or misleading information. By Mr Christie's account, this was the posture adopted by Ms Llewellyn in the Wong case, until he apparently persuaded the DPP to allow one of her assistants to prosecute.

The mild sanction against Mr Wong notwithstanding, other public officials, aware of this precedent, are now likely to be wary in their approach to probes by the contractor general, as, too, should be legislators, assuming that the Integrity Commission will more readily refer breaches to the prosecutors and will be minded to go to court. Parliamentarians should be aware that their colleagues who were convicted last week could have been fined J$200,000, or six months in jail, or both, which our magistrates ought not to be afraid to impose to the hilt.

If, indeed, there is a new aggression at the Office of the DPP to go after public officers who flout the rules aimed at monitoring integrity, the posture will also be welcome at the commission that polices civil servants. In its 2009-2010 report, that agency lamented that Ms Llewellyn's office often withdraws cases against officials who fail to file their declarations, "which, in the commission's view, frustrates its efforts to reduce corruption".

After the DPP, the next step is for Parliament to strengthen the anti-corruption laws.