Dealing with a corrupt country
A few years ago former Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams suggested that close to 90 per cent of poor Jamaicans are involved in criminality.
Just last week ACP Justin Felice, one of the handful of senior British officers attached to the JCF, told us that he was resented by factions both inside and outside of the JCF. Giving us reason to resent him more, he boldly stated what few public officials would. He told us that the nation is about 85 per cent corrupt.
When Adams made his statement, those who resented him brushed it off as him once again playing to the gallery. Unlike Felice who is a foreigner and white-skinned, Adams is Jamaican to the bone, black-skinned and widely admired as a fearless crime-fighter. Many were prepared to buy into his analysis.
The fact is, corruption and criminality are twins, sustained by the same amniotic environment where to play by the rules is to get shafted. Just ask any youngster who applies for a driver’s licence. He is forced to choose between the frustration of ‘failing’ the test numerous times and paying a one-time private fee and getting the licence.
When criminal dons from inner-city communities direct their ‘soldiers’ to rob businessplaces or individuals from outside the geographic area of the garrison enclave, or to collect extortion money from business entities on the periphery, once the booty enters the ghetto, it is gleefully accepted by many.
Little old ladies with grandchildren will kiss the hands of these criminals and tell them, “God bless yuh mi son.” There are those who say nothing out of fear, because once the power saw begins to run at 3:30 am, they know that it could be the body of an informer being cut up and placed into plastic buckets for its ultimate destination — the sea, as fish food.
Those who accept blood money knowingly are partners in the criminality. Even those who know of it but cower in fear are guilty of sustaining the criminality. From paying a traffic cop $3,000 to avoid getting a ticket to paying a hacker outside a tax collection agency $7,000 for a dud insurance certificate, corruption/criminality has open utility value in the Jamaican society.
The Lotto scammers in Montego Bay who are riding high with their jet skis and pleasure boats are well known to those who give them succour. Those who respect them and eat from their hands are just as involved in corruption/criminality.
Sometimes empirical evidence is best left shelved and the knowledge of men like Adams and Felice relied on. Most Jamaicans know that corruption is widespread and that most of us have, at some point in our lives, given support to it. So, if we know that criminality has ‘infected’ us to a much greater degree than obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, prostate cancer and HIV/AIDS rolled into one, why would we need some study, as one person suggested after listening to ACP Felice, to tell us that it is at a level of 75 per cent or 95 per cent?
Maybe that person ought to ask all 60 members of parliament to bare their souls, by telling us if when they need to license and renew the fitness for their vehicles they actually carry in the cars for testing, or just hand the fitness certificate to someone (with a few thousand dollars) and have the car passed while it is in use.
We must throw people power behind the contractor general
In early September when I contacted Greg Christie — easily Jamaica’s most hard-working, committed and professional public servant — he stated, “The need for a Commission of the Contractor General was first proposed by the Most Hon Edward Seaga in 1975 when, as the leader of the Opposition, during the budget debates of that year he questioned the methods and practices by which publicly financed contracts were awarded and monitored, and Government licences and permits issued.”
At first I wanted to know how was it possible that in a sea of corruption an office such as his could not only survive but produce first-class work consistently, seemingly without fear or favour to any political person, party or office.
Christie continued, “The culture which I have inculcated at the OCG, when it comes to getting the work done, is simply: whatever it takes. Consequently, myself and those who report directly to me and the OCG’s operating and support staff will invariably work beyond normal working hours and on weekends, if and when the need arises.”
Coincidentally, the name Bruce Golding features in the formation of the Office of Contractor General. According to history and Mr Christie, on January 27, 1981, Mr Seaga, in his capacity as the prime minister of Jamaica, appointed a committee, under the chairmanship of then minister of construction, and current prime minister of Jamaica, the Hon Bruce Golding, to determine the technical details which needed to be embodied in legislation authorising the creation of the Office of the Contractor General.
On the basis of that we are forced to form no other conclusion that Prime Minister Golding is more than a principled supporter of the OCG, especially when we remember his strong stance against corruption in the JLP’s manifesto and in his speeches as prime minister.
We also remember quite recently the OCG’s damning report on JLP MP Joe Hibbert and his opting to remain MP not because of his prime minister’s stance on corruption, but because in Jamaica politicians have never seen the honour in resigning while clouds cover their names.
The staff complement stands at 64, and at the top but just as involved as those who report to him is Greg Christie, age 54, LLM and LLB degrees, CLE and ISO Lead Auditor professional certifications, 27 years work experience as a university law lecturer, a legal consultant, an attorney-at-law, a business owner and a corporate vice-president and assistant general counsel for a major United States multinational corporation. He is truly an international man, having worked and resided in four countries.
In 2005, the OCG conducted sustained monitoring on less than 350 Government contracts. Indicative of the increased workload that it has taken on, Christie reported that, in respect of calendar year 2007, for example, the regime assisted the OCG to evaluate and to publish data on Government contracts which numbered in excess of 9,000 with an aggregated value of more than $40 billion.
The periodical workload is huge. The OCG’s Special Investigations Unit handles approximately 30-40 pieces of incoming and outgoing correspondence each month. The workload of the OCG’s two Inspectorates is extensive and includes the following:
Attendance at tender openings, meetings and sites; business verifications and conduct of audits approximately 76 monthly; review of tender advertisements, tender documents and tender evaluation reports – approx.80 monthly; preparation of outgoing correspondence to public bodies and other stakeholders – approx 180 monthly; public body presentations (ended September 2009) – approx 50 monthly; preparation of internal Special Monitoring Reports – approx. 73 monthly; telephone calls with Public Body representatives – approx 400 monthly; meetings with public bodies — approx 10 monthly; assessment and upload of QCA Reports and revised QCA Reports — an average of approx 63 monthly.
There are many who believe that the OCG should have prosecutorial powers, especially given the poor response of lawmakers in the political directorate to put real teeth into penalties on the conviction of public persons. The OCG is not without its fair share of threats, and civil society needs to come alive and support the OCG whenever the office comes under attack from those attached to contractors notionally attached to political parties, especially the ruling JLP.
The voices of those heading NGOs must loudly support the world-class efforts of the OCG in this ‘turd worl’ polity. Those who have a genuine interest in saving Jamaica and seeing it develop into what those of us who saw it gain independence in 1962 believed it would have, must let their voices be heard.
As a people, we have failed, but we have to ask ourselves, if the OCG is shining so brightly, in terms of surpassing its objectives of quantity and quality of work, what can we learn from its example that will allow the rest of the public bodies to rise to their full potential? Lawmakers must be pressured relentlessly to bestow prosecutorial powers on the OCG and see this as the next natural step in the evolution of our democracy.
Anti-corruption is enjoying a vogue that needs to last until we are at a safe level, which probably means in the next 20 years. In this process we must call out those politicians who are deliberately slow in getting with the programme.
Has Tarn Peralto gone mad?
South East St Mary MP Tarn Peralto is not the most popular man in the JLP. He sits on Parliament’s Human Resources and Social Development Committee, thus one assumes that his IQ is above the level of a moron.
Hearing him on the radio, one tends to believe that what he says makes sense. Recently however, he seems to have been begging for attention, any attention. Petty politicians compete with others belonging to the other party during election campaigns. After they win they compete among themselves, not in terms of quality of work but simply to get attention.
Apparently that has happened in the case of Mr Peralto recently. In a time when many journalists were giving the JLP administration a failing grade at leading the nation forward and absolutely no one was paying any attention to Mr Peralto, he said of members of the press, “There have to be standards of registration and that’s where you need to get to. I believe it is going to come. I promise you that.”
When I spoke to a JLP insider he agreed.
We are however reminded that a few weeks ago the prime minister named two newspaper columnists as having biases against the ruling party. So what if they are biased? If they are, and their weekly pieces are seen as predictable pieces of party political propaganda, readers will decide and editors will act.
The JLP administration has issued a press release distancing itself from the moronic rants of Mr Peralto. It however needs to go further.
A tax on government paper makes sense
Super profits in a slippery, soft economy must mean that those financial entities who scored big when their clients had less, had discovered something that we haven’t. Or it could be that the easiest game in town is buying up truckloads of government paper at 20 per cent.
Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller is quite correct when she suggests that the embattled JLP administration should impose a special tax on government paper. In making it sound as if it’s as easy as increasing the rate of GCT, she misses an important point.
The big players in the private sector do not want governmental authorities to mess with their money outside of what they now pay in taxes. The big players are not the little man and woman at street level taking home $6,000 per week and must pay GCT. The big players can hurt any government.
Just ask Michael Manley about the 1970s. That is, if he can hear you. The big players have to be moved by transformational and exceptional leadership. They have to be coaxed, tucked in at nights and they have to be served breakfast in bed. That is just the nature of the beast.
Capital flight cannot be afforded at this time. Those in the JLP Cabinet who were or are close to big money have to make the pitch of their lives to these big boys, but at the same time it must be pointed out that if they wish to remain here and be a part of the process of rescuing Jamaica and bringing about development, everyone needs to step back, reassess and give up a little piece of the pie.
After all, there is no one around today who would dare tell them that if dem vex, there are five flights a day to Miami. That era is behind us. The Government must now lobby the big private sector players who know that nowhere in the world can they get 20 per cent per annum guaranteed on government instruments.
That fact, by itself, wins the Government the first round, that is, if it isn’t afraid to enter the ring with a super heavyweight, in this little pond.
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