What learning curve?

WE’D BE surprised if most Jamaicans weren’t as disconcerted as we were by Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ suggestion that Jamaican institutions are struggling up a learning curve in the fight against corruption. It was as if he was making an excuse for the failure of governments, including his own, to robustly tackle the problem of graft, kickbacks and influence peddling. That doesn’t help.

Mr Holness’ strongest supporters, driven by partisanship, will probably sympathise with him, arguing that his administration has been no more corrupt than any other, which isn’t the point, although the raft of scandals it has faced in the nearly four years in office doesn’t help. In that time, two of Mr Holness’ ministers have been forced to resign, including one who has been charged for fraud, in the face of allegations of corruption within their portfolios. The heads of agencies that used to be overseen by the other have lost their jobs because of these schemes that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

At his party’s annual conference on Sunday, Mr Holness argued that Jamaica’s legislative and institutional frameworks for battling corruption were more advanced than its neighbours in the Englishspeaking Caribbean. The obvious question, therefore, is why do they appear not to work or to have worked well? That’s a matter of the learning curve, the prime minister claimed.

He said: “We are … very new on the scale of dealing with anti-corruption issues, so there is a learning curve we are going through. What is important is that the Government supports the development of institutions so that it can accelerate on that learning curve and provide resources so that they can move very quickly up that learning curve and that the Government does not intervene and interfere.”

Mr Holness’ remark invites a number of observations, the most obvious, perhaps, being that Jamaica’s anti-corruption efforts seem to involve a lot of slow learners. Second, it implies impotence on the part of the prime minister in imposing his will on what was expected to be the signature undertaking of his premiership.

When he returned to office in 2016, after the brief stint as prime minister four years earlier, Mr Holness made much of the fact that he was the first leader born after Jamaica’s independence, who, unburdened by the baggage of the past, would bring a new ethos to the job. That, he suggested, included an intolerance of corruption. Indeed, it was expected that his administration would be squeaky clean. Unfortunately, within months, the Holness administration was facing allegations of the political award of contracts and the distribution of jobs in a bid to influence municipal elections.

Thereafter came the ministerial scandals. That some of these are before the courts may indicate that elements of the anti-corruption framework do sometimes work. What Jamaicans, however, expect is that it should work at all times – robustly. And not a decade from now.

NO EXCUSE

It is true that the Integrity Commission, the overarching anti-corruption agency that subsumed the formerly three separate bodies that policed the behaviour of legislators and public servants and oversaw the award and execution of government contracts, is only 20 months old. That is no excuse for the long-term lethargy in the fight against corruption or the presumption of a steep learning curve for it to get on with its job.

Graft, kickbacks, and influence peddling are not new phenomena. Before the specialised anti-corruption institutions, they could have tackled them by statute or as common-law offences such as fraud, bribery, various conspiracies, or misbehaviour in public office. In 1973, Jamaica created its first of the special bodies, the Parliamentary Integrity Commission, which was followed in the 1980s by the Office of the Contractor General and in the 1990s by the commission to which public servants were to annually file income and asset statements. That these failed, leading to the creation of the Integrity Commission, wasn’t because their overseers were unaware of their responsibilities, but for the absence of supporting political will to get the job done.

In the absence of a crusader, such as Greg Christie, when he was the contractor general, that will happen when there is political conviction from the top that drives change, which is the promise we expect Prime Minister Holness to fulfil. This can happen without encroachment on the independence of anti-corruption bodies.

The opinions on this page, except for The Editorial, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Gleaner.