JEREMIE’S BOXING DAY GIFT

“But what this Govern-ment have with the Integrity Act?” an acquaintance remarked last week, a few days after Attorney General John Jeremie announced his intention to exempt judges and magistrates from declaring their assets and liabilities by modifying the Integrity in Public Life Act 2000. My pal’s comment, phrased in true Trini, neatly summed up the present administration’s shoddy treatment of the Integrity legislation ever since the PNM had departed the Opposition benches for Government’s green pastures. Delays in enforcing the Act, indifference to its code of conduct and unacceptable excuses for proposed enfeebling alterations, that’s what we have had for three years from an administration that is up and down the land preaching probity in public life. The Patrick Manning regime has done everything to give the impression that it is bent on and quite content to emasculate if not disable the Integrity Act. It is relentlessly gnawing at the Act’s spirit and provisions; the aim being, one supposes, to convert the bill into another useless piece of legislation to be placed on a shelf somewhere to gather dust.

The Government’s latest assault on the essence and intent of the Integrity Act is as unacceptable as its past offensives; John Jeremie’s reasons for the attack equally unsatisfactory. The Attorney General’s speech to the House on the alleged constitutional dilemma created by the Act and his clich?d reassurances that judges will not be a law onto themselves, nothing but a lot of political sound and fury signifying zero. Zero plans, that is, to make the judiciary accountable. If you don’t believe me, then read again the reports of the AG’s hazy assertion that the question of judges and magistrates declaring their assets and liabilities is a constitutional maze and that the sole way out of the legal labyrinth is for him to expunge the “offending clauses in the Integrity Act.”  Translation of his speech: no declarations for judges and magistrates.

If the Government intended TT’s judicial officers to be accountable, Jeremie would have said exactly how else the officials of TT’s judiciary would be made to adhere to the same rules governing other persons in public life, people with considerably less power than judges and magistrates. He would have told us if and how he and his administration were contemplating extending the powers of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission. He would have said whether his Government had asked of or received from its foreign experts a solution to the constitutional complexity they had reportedly encountered in the Act. He would have told us his regime was seeking the views of the public on this issue. Jeremie would have given us copies of the expert opinions. He did none of the above and as such, as much as washed his hands of this so-called constitutional mess and of an important political issue.

I’m no lawyer, but to me what Jeremie is trying to sell sounds like pure political poppycock. Several countries with written constitutions, constitutions which ascribe to the doctrine of the separation of powers as ours does, require their judges to declare assets and liabilities. Can’t the AG consult these constitutions, the TT public, the Opposition, his foreign experts and the local judiciary and then draft the appropriate amendments to the Constitution to make possible these judicial declarations? We could for example, take a leaf out of Nigeria’s constitution and include in the section of ours governing the appointment of judicial officers, a clause which states something such as “A person appointed to any judicial office shall not begin to perform the functions of that office until he has declared his assets and liabilities.” Any judge or magistrate who failed to adhere to the rule could be moved from office after a hearing in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, that is to say, in line with the very process that currently obtains in our Constitution. If necessary, flouting the requirement to declare could also carry the same penalties as those which apply under the Integrity Act.

Or what if our judges and magistrates declared their assets and liabilities to the Integrity Commission, but the Integrity Act was altered to permit a member of the JLSC a say in the appointment of the Integrity Commissioners? Would not any of these measures alleviate the constitutional concerns of everyone? There must be a number of ways out of this supposed constitutional quagmire, exits which will not further undermine the raisons d’?tre of the Integrity in Public Life Act, which are “to make new provisions for the prevention of corruption of persons in public life by providing for public disclosure; to regulate the conduct of persons exercising public functions; to preserve and promote the integrity of public officials and institutions.”
And the PNM is obliged to work zealously with one and all to find a constitutional route by which judges and magistrates can make annual financial declarations if only because it is the PNM which demanded in 2000 that judges be included in the original legislation. Its backtracking now, suggests that the PNM was being mischievous when it demanded judges be included in the Act in 2000, that it was seeking to frustrate the UNC and that it wanted to ramajay for voters. Oddly enough, and regardless of its motives in 2000, the PNM was in line then with the new global politics of total transparency and accountability.

It was also in touch with public sentiment. No longer though is the PNM cognisant of either the people or the need for fresh political principles. Not when the AG so glibly announces that he intends to free judicial officers of their duty to make financial declarations.
Today is Boxing Day, a holiday whose roots are reportedly found in Great Britain and in a long-ago practice of the rich giving cash to the lower classes on the day after Christmas Day. Christmas Day was for exchanging gifts with peers and families. What the Attorney General did ten days ago when he announced his intention to exclude judges and magistrates from the Integrity in Public Life Act was give the people of Trinidad and Tobago a penny ante Boxing Day gift. To the judiciary, however, Jeremie’s declaration must have resulted the most priceless of Christmas presents.
suz@itrini.com