Johnson Smith brushes aside corruption criticisms against the gov’t
Published:Friday | November 4, 2022 | 3:50 PM
Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kamina Johnson Smith has sought to brush aside criticisms by Opposition Senator Floyd Morris who painted the Government as corrupt, citing polling data in recent times.
Morris, who contributed to the State of the Nation Debate in the Upper House earlier today, charged that corruption was on the increase in Jamaica.
He said that more than 50 per cent of Jamaicans have said that the administration was corrupt, “the highest rating ever given of any political administration on this issue in modern polling data”.
A Nationwide News Network-Bluedot poll published in September this year stated that 55 per cent of Jamaicans believe the government is very corrupt.
But Johnson Smith, who also made her contribution to the State of the Nation Debate today, said that under the People's National Party administration the score on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 2012 was 38.
She said that since 2017 the score has improved to 44.
“So we are clearly perceived as less corrupt than the Opposition has been during our tenure,” said Johnson Smith.
She attributed the improvement to the work done by the Integrity Commission, the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, and the strengthening of anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism regulations, among others.
Earlier this year, Transparency International released its CPI which showed that Jamaica fell to 70th in 2021 from 69th out of 180 countries in 2020.
However, the CPI remained at 44, where zero is considered highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Jamaica remained the fifth most corrupt country in the Caribbean behind Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Commenting on Jamaica's score earlier this year, the Integrity Commission suggested that Jamaica's CPI score had stagnated due to strong resistance to anti-corruption reform from many political figures.
In its 2021 release of the CPI scores, Transparency International said, “Jamaica has been struggling for several years. It has made some progress – the establishment of the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency as an independent body and the corruption cases recently pursued by the Auditor General's Department are two examples – but this comes alongside significant resistance to (anti-corruption) reforms from many politicians in the country.”
The Integrity Commission said it had advanced repeated recommendations for revisions to be made to Jamaica's anti-corruption legislative and policy frameworks but to little or no avail.
A joint select committee of Parliament has been meeting in recent times to review the Integrity Commission Act.
The committee has heard several submissions including a raft of recommendations from the Integrity Commission to strengthen the oversight body as it fights corruption.
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