CPI scores show Caribbean still has way to go

“That is where they go wrong a lot of the time,” said Dr Vindel Kerr, a lecturer in Ethics at the UWI, St. Augustine and a corporate governance and corruption researcher.

Business Day reached out to Kerr to get his views on the findings released at by the Transparency Institute of Trinidad and Tobago last week where TT was shown to have scored 35 on the Corruption Perception Index in 2016, down from 39 in 2015. The score has earned the country a ranking of 101 out of 176 countries. In 2015, our ranking was 72 out 168 countries.

His own country had a score of 39, earning them a ranking of 83.

“Additionally, there has to be political will,” said Kerr, “It is all well and good to create laws. But it is the politicians who have to ensure that the appropriate mechanisms are in place for effective and efficient enforcement. When they turn a blind eye to the situation, nothing is going to happen. We see a lot of that.

For example, in the matter of campaign finance, it has been 15 years since it was initially brought up in Jamaica and several in Trinidad. In the same period, they have expedited many other simple, mundane and sometimes self-serving legislation, such as raising their salaries, or giving themselves pensions, which is now being discussed by the TT senate.” Over the years, Jamaica and several other Caribbean territories have managed the feat of arresting public figures caught in financial wrongdoing, whereas TT is yet to make any significant arrests or convictions on this score.

We asked Kerr, how Jamaica and high scoring Caribbean countries like the Bahamas and Barbados were able to do this. Kerr acknowledged that even though the region’s and Jamaica’s scores were generally still too low Jamaica had several mechanisms that helped contain corruption.

“Jamaica is known in the corruption literature and the Western hemisphere for having a considerable anticorruption model.” He said the island has several different layers of corruption checks including a parliamentary Integrity Commission, a Corruption Prevention Commission and a Commission of the Contractor General.

He said a weakness of TT’s anticorruption mechanism was that too many times, State enterprises boards had sole authority to determine who received contracts. The UWI lecturer said in Jamaica, this authority was tiered in that contracts above a certain amount were approved by the CEO, the board and finally by Cabinet, depending on the amount.

“The Cabinet in Jamaica, is the highest authority to decide on contracts.” He also advised that TT to set up anti-corruption mechanisms that gave the investigatory body independence and full police powers, the establishment of an independent procurement body to monitor public service contracts and a special corruption court.

“A next thing TT needs to do is to bring politicians and public figures before the courts,” said Kerr. “And charge them, like most other Caribbean countries.”