A new Integrity Commission

On May 31st, 2022, the government finally composed the board of the Integrity Commission and Chandra Gajraj was sworn in as the Chair. The life of the previous commission had expired on February 21, 2021 meaning that for 15 months under this administration there has been no effective oversight of whether those public officers who come under the Integrity Commission Act have conducted themselves properly. Even before the expiry of the life of the last Commission headed by retired Land Court Judge Kumar Doraisami it was clear that the body could not perform at its optimum as it did not have adequate resources. One hopes to hear soon from the new Commission as to its plans and whether it has been adequately resourced to undertake its important functions.

Mrs Gajraj is no doubt eminently capable of discharging the role of Chair of the body. However, some caveats should be entered at this point. In the main, it is the appointees of the PPP/C government who will come under the strictest scrutiny to determine whether they have illicitly enriched themselves in the oilfevered state that the country now finds itself. There are many corrupt deals to be made by virtue of the favours that could be provided, the blind eye turned or the ubiquitous kickback. In an environment that has traditionally been permissive to corruption and a well-founded international perception of such, there is a great burden on institutions like the Integrity Commission to defend their expanse of the anticorruption architecture.

Mrs Gajraj will have to overcome the enormous public expectations of her in this office particularly because of her connections to people who have been close to the PPP/C. She is the widow of the former controversial Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj who operated within the inner sanctum of the Jagdeo-led administration during one of the most troubling periods of the country’s history. She is also the General Secretary of the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha whose late founder, pandit Reepu Daman Persaud was a long-serving executive member of the PPP/C and minister in its post-1992 governments and whose daughter, the current Minister of Human Services, Vindhya Persaud runs the organisation. That aside, Mrs Gajraj has also had longstanding associations with financial institutions: Trust Company Guyana Limited and Demerara Bank Limited which could possibly pose a conflict were there to be investigations under the Integrity Commission of the transactions of public officers with these entities.

It will be true to say that in no period of its existence has the Integrity Commission convinced the public that it has assiduously done the work assigned to it by its governing Act. This must not be the case with this Commission given the rise of the oil and gas economy and influx of foreign and overseas-based investors into the country.

Based on the data published on its website as of December 31st, 2021, the Integrity Commission has its work cut out for it. For the declaration year 2021 (covering the period 1st July, 2020 to June 30th, 2021) out of the 1523 expected declarations only 569 were received and 954 were outstanding. It is these 954 which will immediately pose a challenge to the credibility of the Integrity Commission. Will the body act to ensure that all officers answerable to it comply with the Act? Outstanding declarations were also high for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020. The Integrity Commission’s posture on these errant officers will determine the nature of compliance for declaration year 2022 which will run from 1st July, 2022 to June 30th 2023.

Guyana’s Integrity Commission Act mandates that every person who is a person in public life, not being a member of the Commission, is required to file a declaration every year on or before June 30th. It further says “A declaration under subsection (1) or (2) shall give full, true and complete particulars of the assets and liabilities as on the relevant date, and the income during a period of twelve months immediately prior to the relevant date, of the person filling the declaration (whether the assets were held by that person in his own name or in the name of any other person) and of the spouse and children of such person to the extent to which such person has knowledge of the same”.

Those who fail to submit their declarations or submit declarations that are false or incomplete shall be liable, on summary conviction, to “a fine of twenty-five thousand dollars and to imprisonment for a term of not less than six months nor more than one year, and where the offence involves the nondisclosure, by the declarant, of property, which should have been disclosed in the declaration, the magistrate convicting the person shall order the person to make full disclosure of the property within a given time and on failure to comply with the order of the magistrate within the given time, the said offence shall be deemed to be a continuing

offence and the person shall be liable to a further fine of ten thousand dollars for each day on which the offence continues.”

The Code of Conduct grafted onto the Integrity Act also provides a template for ensuring the scrupulous conduct of public officers and it would be interesting to discern how the Integrity Commission will address complaints about the violation of this code.

Among the ten Principles of Public Life enshrined in the code are:

Accountability: A person in public life shall be accountable to the public for his or her decisions and actions, and shall submit himself or herself to scrutiny and criticism.

Integrity: A person in public life shall declare any private interest relating to the discharge of his or her duties and responsibilities, and ensure that this or her personal decisions and actions are not in conflict with the national interest.

Transparency: Persons in public life shall be open about all their public decisions and actions and be prepared to provide explanations when so demanded by the public.

In his Accountability Column of December 14, 2020, former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran said “It is awful that the Commission, where persons in high offices were expected to declare their assets, was headless for several years…we need a process by which we can have this important body reconstituted and perform the functions for which it has been established to ensure that we don’t have officials and others benefitting from disproportionate wealth, or ill-gotten wealth, or unjust enrichment”.

The Integrity Commission now has to fulfil its very important obligations under the Act.