Dwayne Vernon | Trust deficit: Corruption, good governance and the way forward

Corruption corrodes the institutions on which democracies depend. In Jamaica, corruption and the perception of it now threaten three pillars of good governance: participation, the rule of law, and accountability.

This is not a partisan argument; scandals have implicated administrations of both parties. The aim is to propose a way forward.

On Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Jamaica’s score rose from 39 to 44 in 2017, after new anti-corruption laws. It has not moved since. In 2025, Jamaica ranked 73rd of 182 countries, below the score of 50 that marks a serious corruption problem and behind six Caribbean neighbours, led by Barbados. The World Bank agrees: control of corruption is Jamaica’s weakest dimension, at 46.2 out of 100, against 72.8 for Barbados.

Nor is this foreign opinion. Vision 2030 Jamaica tracks these measures, and the Integrity Commission aspires to a score above 80. Having chosen the yardstick, the State cannot disown it when the reading is unflattering.

Corruption thrives in opacity. In December 2024, the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal pointed to more than J$3 trillion of spending by 16 government entities whose accounts had not been submitted for audit. The minister of finance said no money was missing. But the J$3 trillion is not evidence that money was stolen; it is evidence that the State cannot show that it was not. Where corruption is assumed, honesty looks foolish and compliance erodes. The poor bear the heaviest burden.

QUIET WITHDRAWAL

Turnout fell from 78 per cent in 1989 to 37.9 per cent in 2020. The pandemic offered an explanation then. It offered none in September 2025, when turnout was about 39.5 per cent. A government elected by roughly one in five registered electors rests on a thin base, predisposed to serve the advantaged minority who elected it. Young people are increasingly convinced that “voting won’t change the outcomes”.

Murders fell by 43 per cent in 2025 to a 31-year low, a genuine public good. Yet, INDECOM recorded 311 fatal shootings by the security forces, a 65 per cent increase; roughly one in three violent deaths was inflicted by agents of the State. Numbers alone prove no killing unlawful, but INDECOM has flagged inactive body-worn cameras. A Full Court also declared the emergency proclamations of 2018 to 2023 void, since a state of affairs persisting for years is not an emergency. Order achieved at the expense of due process is not the rule of law.

Thirteen members of parliament and one senator were referred for illicit-enrichment investigation, yet the public cannot learn who they are until reports are tabled. No sitting or former minister has been convicted of a substantive corruption offence under the commission’s regime. All are presumed innocent. But, when the law falls fully on a mid-level official while ministerial matters linger, citizens conclude that justice bends to rank.

The National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, created after Hurricane Melissa, may command up to US$10 billion. Its chief executive answers to the prime minister, no board oversees it, and it is exempt from standard procurement rules. The concern is structural, not personal. Robert Klitgaard summarised corruption as monopoly plus discretion minus accountability. When discretion escapes the usual checks, corruption is not so much committed as legitimised.

THREE FIRST STEPS

Step One: A leader of unquestioned integrity.

Where corruption is systemic, the strongest corrective is a visible break at the top. Our leaders have long invoked Singapore. What we should borrow is its standard: Lee Kuan Yew placed no one, his ministers included, beyond investigation; in 2024, a former minister was jailed. Against that standard, a head of government in extended litigation with the State’s anti-corruption body is a severe obstacle to public confidence, though no court has made any adverse finding against him.

Step Two: Anti-corruption agencies with teeth.

The Integrity Commission is overseen by the very legislators whose declarations it examines. A joint select committee, including the Opposition and civil society, should review the anti-corruption laws, and the commission’s reports should reach the leader of the Opposition when they reach Parliament. INDECOM should be properly resourced, and body-worn cameras made mandatory.

Step Three: A civil society strengthened through the Local Governance Act, 2016.

The act requires public council meetings and Local Public Accounts Committees, yet the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation went seven years without one. The State should publish municipal budgets, fund civic education for the young and target voter turnout above 60 per cent. As Plato’s Socrates warned, the punishment for declining to take part is to be ruled by someone worse.

Each step depends partly on the actors whose conduct it seeks to change. Initiative may pass to those outside the State. In Taiwan and Nepal, young citizens forced the powerful to answer. The lesson is not to import protest, but to recognise that churches, media, civil society and universities can sustain reform beyond electoral cycles.

Integrity without competence will not deliver growth and security; competence without integrity will not restore trust. Does such a leader exist in Jamaican public life? There is no reason to accept that the answer is no. The task of citizens is to insist that such leaders come forward, and to reward them at the polls when they do.

Dr Dwayne Vernon is a lecturer in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona. This article draws on his paper, ‘Corruption as a Threat to Good Governance: The Jamaican Case and a Three-Part Agenda for Reform’.