Editorial | Why would MPs squeal against transparency?

Maybe we are not to be, but this newspaper is surprised and appalled at the vehemence of the pushback by legislators over the Integrity Commission’s (IC) recommendation that parliamentarians be required to be more transparent in their annual assets and liabilities filings with the commission.

For a group whose collective reputation is so low, and who enjoy so little trust from the public, it might have been expected that MPs would clutch at any opportunity to turn around their standing and honour, and to rebuild faith in the country’s democracy. Or, perhaps it is that politicians live in ignorance of the perception that Jamaicans have of them and the institutions over which they preside. In that event, we again commend to legislators the recently released report by Vanderbilt University’s LAPOP research laboratory on attitudes towards democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Integrity Commission is Jamaica’s primary anti-corruption watchdog. Its job includes monitoring the award and execution of government contracts and annually scrutinising the assets and liabilities statements of legislators and select bureaucrats, as a deterrent to the use of public office for private illicit enrichment.

Parliament is reviewing the five-year-old law governing the IC, providing the commission with the opportunity to advocate for reforms it has been recommending since its first report in 2019. One of them is for more expansive reporting by legislators.

For instance, the commission wants parliamentarians to disclose any membership of political, trade or professional organisations; contracts with the Government; directorships of, or beneficial interests in firms; whether they have beneficial interest in trusts; “or any other substantial interest that may result in a potential conflict of interest”.

Separately, the commission also proposes the removal of the law’s exemption of the reporting of gifts by legislators and bureaucrats, if the presents are from family members. Currently, the legislation requires the declaration of gifts of over $100,000 if they are not from family members. The current exemption is an obvious and gaping loophole for potential graft and kickbacks to be channelled to public officials via their families.

This newspaper finds nothing unreasonable in these or any of the other documentation being suggested by the Integrity Commission. What we found disturbing was the rancour with which the idea of legislators having to declare their institutional exposure or beneficial interests in organisations was met across the aisle of the parliamentary committee reviewing the law. Their peevish response was of a group that feels it is being unduly picked on.

Marlene Malahoo Forte, the legal and constitutional affairs minister, whinged about “constantly putting the spotlight” on parliamentarians.

“You now want to single out parliamentarians, that they must be required to make submission of an additional category of interest, and the concern only relates to people who are part of the political directorate,” she griped.

Delroy Chuck moaned that the requirement would be invasive. “The only thing that is left is for the Integrity Commission to ask us is to put in the legislation that once per year you can visit a parliamentarian’s home to investigate,” he said.

Donna Scott-Mottley echoed the screed about invasiveness, complained that the requirement would be burdensome, and accused the IC of heading “overboard” with the proposal. Mrs Scott-Mottley’s opposition colleague, Peter Bunting, a former national security minister who used to be privy to law intelligence from domestic and foreign law-enforcement agencies, suggested that permanent secretaries, the civil service’s heads of ministries, should be held to even greater scrutiny than their political bosses. And he wondered about the IC commissioners.

There is perhaps a case for permanent secretaries and the IC’s commissioners to be subject to similar oversight, although the latter group, unlike MPs and permanent secretaries, has no special access to government resources and exercises no authority over people’s lives. Parliamentarians and the political executive pass laws and shape policy, over whose execution they preside with the support of the permanent bureaucracy.

However, the indecorous squealing of legislators suggested not a wish for intellectual discourse on a serious regulatory question. Rather, many of the rants had the tinge of a spooked and cornered herd on the cusp of a stampede.

That ought not to be the impression that our governors should want to create. Which reprises the matter about the (people’s) attitudes towards democracy and the esteem in which they hold politicians.

In the last general election, just shy of two years ago, the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won with a landslide – 49 out of 63 (78 per cent) parliamentary seats. However, the voter turnout was a mere 37.2 per cent. The JLP received 56.37 per cent of the votes cast. However, the votes it received accounted for merely 21 per cent of registered electors. In the aftermath of the election even that party’s leader, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, agreed there was disenchantment with politics that threatens Jamaica’s democracy.

The LAPOP survey found that over six in 10 Jamaicans do not trust elections, believing them to be manipulated. Indeed, while 57 per cent declared support for democracy, an upward tick from two years earlier, the number was significantly below the 80 per cent from a decade earlier. Additionally, nearly half of the country (46 per cent) would back a military coup to fight corruption.

What is equally disturbing in the face of the rampart-constructing brigade into which the politicians so quickly formed themselves at the committee hearing, is that 55 per cent of Jamaicans believe that the majority, and probably all, politicians are corrupt. That is not the image that anyone who believes in good governance or democracy wants to have of the country’s leaders.