Over the past three decades, Caribbean and Latin American Governments have been struggling to reduce the growing levels of corruption which are affecting the overall socio-economic development and prosperity of their states.
While some Governments have successfully put legislative and judicial measures in place to ward off and tackle corruption more frontally, others are struggling to salvage and protect the remaining scarce resources and commodities from the hands of powerful and influential political agents within their respective territories, because of the fear that they will be mismanaged or siphoned off in a secretive manner.
And there are those Governments that are singing the mantra and talking the talk about fighting corruption at every level of the society. They roll out bold and laudable initiatives aimed, on the surface, at reducing corruption by protecting state assets from theft, as they boldly declare war on their political predecessors to recoup stolen revenues or monies and state assets that were mismanaged, improperly handled, and allegedly used as gifts to party financiers.
Those types of Government often accomplish little, because the work of those agencies established to fight corruption becomes less independent in nature, and more entrenched in politics and subjective in scope. The anti-corruption policies somehow morph into tools of political oppression, and are usually discredited because, many times, the heads of the agencies that are tasked with leading the anti-corruption fight are known individuals with political links and a history of questionable alliances.
In the case of Guyana, the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) is headed by Dr Clive Thomas, who is a Working Peoples Alliance party politician and a member of the governing alliance. The country’s Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) is headed by Sydney James. Several other agencies which play key roles in fighting corruption, malpractices — both political and economic in nature — and wrong doings are neither independent nor established without the influence of the political directorate in some shape or form. Hence the conflicts over the appointments of the country’s GECOM Chairman, a substantive Chancellor of the judiciary and Chief Justice, and the selection of an Ombudsman.
Guyana must do more to implement systems that guarantee the independent appointment of suitably qualified individuals with the right balance of integrity and ethics to key positions within organisations that are critical to the anti-corruption fight.
Perhaps the positions adopted by the leading UK anti-corruption barrister John McKendrick could provide food for thought on the importance of the fight against corruption. McKendrick believes that the rule of law is essential for economic development. He contends that corruption undermines and weakens the rule of law. He believes that an independent judiciary is essential to the rule of law.
He draws attention to the position held by former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Tom Bingham, who also argues that the rule of law is essential for economic development. It therefore goes without saying that the successful conduct of trade, investment and business is promoted by a body of accessible legal rules governing commercial rights and obligations.
McKendrick declares that no person is likely to do business in a country where the parties’ rights and obligations are vague or undecided, or the means by which such rights can be enforced are unclear.
Bingham quotes Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, who, when asked what he considered the single most important contributor to economic growth, answered: “The rule of law.”
And even though many Caribbean countries that feature on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) would like to have a better ranking, Transparency International has said that a country’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 – 100, where 0 means a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean. A country’s rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories included in the index. Last year’s index includes 177 countries and territories; yet, many countries, including Guyana, continue to perform poorly despite their best efforts.
Corruption, therefore, ought not to be seen as a Government problem, but rather as a societal one, including the press and the private sector. Ultimately, citizens can vote Governments out, as the people of Jamaica did in 2011 after the “Dudus” debacle, and here in 2015.
He added that the UK Bribery Act could be a template for the Caribbean to emulate. McKendrick pointed out that it is a short piece of straightforward legislation, and it is something that jurisdictions can apply.
