Blanket gag on watchdog has no merit, says Panton

LEGAL LUMINARY and former president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Seymour Panton, has shredded arguments by legislators who crafted a gag provision in law to restrict the Integrity Commission, Jamaica’s single anti-corruption body from announcing investigations and commenting on them until a report is tabled in Parliament.

A position paper detailing Panton’s views on the gag clause, or Section 53 (3) of the Integrity Commission Act, was tabled onWednesday during a meeting of the Integrity Commission Oversight Committee of Parliament.

With the Integrity Commission being the only law-enforcement body under the imposition of a gag barring it from announcing or commenting on investigations, questions have risen about whether lawmakers have erected this barrier to shield themselves from public scrutiny.

“Unlike the Integrity Commission, lawenforcement agencies in Jamaica and in other countries do have the discretionary power to make public announcements about their investigations. They are not gagged. This suggests that blanket statutory gags are unusual and do raise curious questions, ”Panton opined.

Making a compelling case for legislators to unmuzzle the corruption watchdog, Panton, who is the current chairman of the Integrity Commission, said he was not aware of any similar gag that has been imposed on any other lawenforcement agency in Jamaica.

Panton said the “Integrity Commission, therefore, believes that the ‘gag’ should be cause for significant public alarm and concern”.

With the Integrity Commission being a law enforcement agency, the announcement of an investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog does not, by that very fact, undermine the presumption of innocence, Panton reasoned.

Further, the commission argued that the announcement of an investigation by its officers into an allegation cannot logically undermine the presumption of innocence, or tarnish someone’s reputation, when the disclosure follows an allegation that has already been introduced in the public domain by a third party.

“The Integrity Commission does not make allegations against persons or entities, nor does it tarnish or impugn their reputations,” Panton said.

He argued that as a quasi-judicial body, the commission seeks to unearth or to determine the veracity of the inferences or allegations of misconduct that have already been made by third parties against public officials.

With Jamaica perceived to be highly corrupt, Panton said that the gag only served to further undermine public confidence and trust in the country’s institutions and leaders.

At a previous sitting of a parliamentary oversight committee, executive director of the Integrity Commission, Greg Christie, said that the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom made announcements whenever it commenced an investigation.

Based on Transparency International’s corruption perception index for 2020, Jamaica was ranked as the fifth most corrupt state in the Caribbean ahead of Guyana,Trinidad andTobago, Dominican Republic, and Haiti.