Editorial | Having faith in the walk-back

Notwithstanding the certitude with which his permanent secretary, Sancia Bennett Templer, spoke before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), we concede to Prime Minister Andrew Holness that it was never his intention that the managers of Petrojam would develop and perfect the terms of reference for forensic audit he ordered into aspects of their own management of the company, and then proceed to hire the auditors for the job.

In its big walk-back of the PS’s assertion, the Office of the Prime Minister now says that Mr Holness intended, all along, for the terms of reference to undergo a multi-agency review, including by the finance ministry, before they were to be signed-off on, after which Mr Holness would proceed with the selection and appointment of the auditors. The mandarins of Petrojam had merely submitted suggestions, which were bound to be reviewed.

In other words, Mrs Bennett Templer misspoke.

It is not clear whether the Petrojam effort was unsolicited, or was asked for by the prime minister. Either way, it would have been a bad deal, which should, from the start, have been pellucid to all involved – the PM, the PS, the refinery’s managers and its governors. It automatically raises questions of conflicts of interests, whether real or perceived.

Based on the findings of the Government’s auditor general, there is a raft of issues at the scandal-riddled oil refinery that might have elicited forensic analysis. The Prime Minister, however, decided to focus on the unaccounted-for loss of more than 600,000 barrels of oil at the refinery over the five-year period, up to 2017/18, at a cost of J$5.2 billion.

Clearly, expertise in the oil trading and petroleum refining business would be useful in helping to create the terms of reference into this matter, which the bosses of Petrojam, no doubt, believe they possess.

MONGOOSES PROBE SACKING OF HEN HOUSE

But they should have known that their involvement in any fashion would have been greeted precisely as it has been – as if, perhaps most unjustly, mongooses were being hired to probe the sacking of a hen house.

And if their involvement was solicited by anyone at Jamaica House, and more so the prime minister, it would have represented a serious failure in judgement, which, happily, because of Mrs Bennett Templer’s misspeak, can be cauterised and corrected. Indeed, this development should be an important teaching and learning episode for the Holness administration.

People’s visceral reaction to the development underlines the public’s perception that Jamaica remains a highly corrupt country and that the Government has been insufficiently robust in dealing with the problem.

Our stagnation on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index – having dropped four places, to 70 among 180 countries, with our score remaining at 44 out of 100 – no doubt contributed to this response.

“In Jamaica, the Petrojam scandal, involving the country’s only state-owned oil company, shows that nepotism, mismanagement of public funds and other forms of corruption are still well-rooted in the Caribbean,” TI said.

It’s observation about the failure of the broader America’s region to make headway against corruption, it said “Procurement and contract awarding are particularly problematic.”

Prime Minister Holness came to office on a strong anti-corruption platform, to which, he insists, he remains firmly pledged. This newspaper wants to believe that, as we expect most Jamaicans want as well. To that end, we expect robust action to deal with this scourge and hope this week’s faux pas was just that – and done in misguided innocence.