INTEGRITY? THAT’S FOR THE OPPOSITION

INTRODUCTION: On Thursday August 14, 2003, Prime Minister Patrick Manning finally articulated why his Government delayed, relaying in Parliament, the declaration forms, which correspond to and make effective, the Integrity in Public Life Act, 2000.

There was a “raging debate” going on in his Government over the Act, he confessed, as the PNM had “second thoughts” about the Act because it thought that the net of persons who had to make declarations to the Integrity Commission, was too wide. “We had mature reflection and began to wonder if the net was not cast too wide,” he confessed Thursday at his post-Cabinet briefing. No one would want to serve on State boards, he added.

Following is what his MP for Diego Martin East Colm Imbert, now Minister of Health, had to say about the Act’s “net” during its debate in the Lower House on October 6, 2000:
Mr Colm Imbert: “We wish all Senators to be included within this legislation. There is no valid reason for them to be excluded. All Senators should declare their assets. Senators are involved in decision-making and can have a tremendous impact on national life. We ask that the chairman, the board members and the chief executive officers of every state enterprise be required to declare their assets with the Integrity Commission. “We ask for that. There should be no discretion in this matter. Once you are willing to take the chairmanship of a state enterprise, why would you be afraid to declare your assets? You have state enterprises like Petrotrin, BWIA — well that is no longer a state enterprise, I believe. But there are state enterprises that have revenues exceeding $1billion per annum. Take Petrotrin, for example, the revenues of Petrotrin exceed $1billion, whereas you have ministries who have allocations that might be as small as $20 to $30 million. Yet you require a Minister who does not have the flexibility, the powers and control that a chairman or a CEO of a state enterprise has; you require a minister or even a Member of Parliament, for example, who has no government departments under his jurisdiction, such as the Member for Barataria/San Juan; he has no government department under his jurisdiction; he does not deal with the budgetary allocations (Crosstalk) Yes, but I am just saying, you have a situation where it has been recognised that Members of Parliament should declare their assets and yet you have Members of Parliament without any control over government departments declaring their assets and chairmen of state enterprises, such as NIPDEC; why should the Chairman of NIPDEC, the agency in charge of the billion dollar airport, not be required to declare his assets? Would we not want to know what were the assets of the Chairman of NIPDEC in 1995 and the assets of the Chairman of NIPDEC in the year 2000?

“So that we believe that the Government is simply not going far enough with this legislation; it is not going far enough. We do not understand the exclusions. I am pretty certain that many of them were motivated by Government Senators, as I have said, and when one reads the committee reports one sees that Government Senators were most vociferous in demanding that certain persons be excluded from the purview of the Integrity Commission. We are demanding that this Government amend this legislation to include the persons that we have requested, as I said, Senators, Judges, Magistrates. We are demanding that all chairmen of state enterprises... Mr Assam (then a UNC government Minister): Judges too? Mr C Imbert: “Why not? What is the problem? What is so sacrosanct about that? In my opinion it will create greater respect for that system. Why should anybody be sacrosanct? Why should we have any sacred cows in this society? I am serious. You see, this is why I find what they have brought before us offensive, because you are skirting the issues, you are going on a sort of circuitous course to deal with very, very important issues.

“There is also a situation here, where the Parliament would have the power to take disciplinary action against persons who have been reported to the commission and the commission has prepared a report. Again, something has got to be wrong with that, because at any given point in time it would affect Members on the other side when they go into Opposition. At any given point in time one side has a majority within this House. And if you are going to allow the majority in any Parliament to take action against Members of this House, then you can have a situation of bias or victimisation. I do not believe that is due process. I do not think that a majority of persons of this House should be allowed to take disciplinary action against Members. I believe that is a matter for the Speaker and there are well-established traditions on the type of action that should be taken against Members of this House.

“So we have very serious reservations about the clauses in this Bill and we have a number of changes we wish to make and we are asking the Government to take us on very seriously. If it does not, then we know it has something to hide. If the Government does not want the Chairman of NIPDEC to declare his assets, then we know it has something to hide. If it does not want the chief executive officer of NIPDEC to declare his assets, then we know it has something to hide. If it does not want Government Senators who have high-paying jobs in the state sector and are in receipt of two state incomes, to declare their assets, it has something to hide. If it does not want Government Senators who get large legal briefs from the Government to declare their assets, then it has something to hide. We demand that these changes be made and we expect they will be made. I thank you, Mr Speaker.”