Editorial | IC’s call on Parliament

Juliet Holness can rightly claim that having only recently assumed the Speakership of the House – and with it the job as the legislature’s accountable officer, to whom its administrative staff ultimately reports – she has not had much time to prioritise the things she wants to accomplish.

While we are sympathetic to that position and are willing to afford Ms Holness some space to set out a reform agenda that will hopefully lead to improved parliamentary oversight of the executive, there are some things that just cannot wait. Among them is a clear indication from the Speaker of what has been, or is being done to ensure that taxpayers’ resources are not wasted and are used for their intended purposes.

In other words, Ms Holness must clearly signal how the administrative managers of Parliament will be held accountable for their fiduciary obligations to taxpayers.

This newspaper, of course, makes or implies no allegation of wrongdoing on anyone’s part. And to the extent that there may have been misbehaviour, the facts are likely to be aired and become clearer, in a court of law, as an appendage to another matter.

Nonetheless, Speaker Holness is obligated to address the issue in the face of the recently tabled investigative report by the Integrity Commission (IC) that essentially accused her predecessor, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, of abusing a motor vehicle upkeep scheme with the complicity of parliamentary staff.

CRIMINALLY CHARGE

Separately, the IC has said it intends to criminally charge Ms Dalrymple-Philibert for failing, over seven years, to list in her income, assets and liabilities filings a vehicle she owned, which was bought using duty concessions the government makes available to public servants, but which she failed to report to the commission.

Under the concession scheme, which is available every five years, civil servants are allowed a rebate of 20 per cent on the duties of vehicles with a cost of up to US$35,000, or nearly J$5.5 million.

If a more expensive vehicle is bought, the public service has to pay the difference between the allowable rebate and the additional cost.

While the scheme has helped public servants to afford more expensive vehicles, the arrangement comes with a number of provisos. If the vehicle is sold before three years, the beneficiary has to pay the rebated tariffs; the benefit is not transferable to other persons; and the vehicle should be under the control of the registered owner; and in circumstances where the public servant claims upkeep and travelling allowances, it has to be for the latest vehicle for which he or she received the concession.

In Ms Dalrymple-Philibert’s case, the Integrity Commission said that she bought a vehicle in 2016 using the concession, kept it until 2021, but never reported it as an asset.

The former Speaker’s explanation was that it was an oversight, which happened because the vehicle was kept, and generally used, by her sister and her sister’s family. But according to verbatim testimony in the IC’s report, Ms Dalrymple-Philibert insisted that she did not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of the vehicle, which she owned.

SPECIFIC ISSUE

The specific issue to which Ms Holness’ attention is necessary, is the IC’s claim that between 2016 and 2020, before she became Speaker and was allocated a vehicle from Parliament’s fleet, Ms Dalrymple-Philibert was paid upkeep for a vehicle other than the one that was registered.

The commission’s director of investigations was surprised that this could have happened, given that Ms Dalrymple-Philibert’s request for the concession was made via Parliament, whose accountable and/or accountable officers, he argued, “were negligent in their processing of the payments”. That, the IC said, constituted a breach of the government’s guidelines on the payment of these allowances and of fiduciary obligations under the island’s Financial Audit and Administration Act that governs the behaviour of state entities.

The commission recommended that the finance ministry seeks to recoup all the payments that were made to Ms Dalrymple-Philibert and that Customs does the same with respect to the duties it forfeited.

The commission also recommended “the Clerk to the Houses of Parliament undertakes a review of the approval process for the payment of motor vehicle allowances … with a view to ensuring that it is both fit for purpose and fraud-proof”.

The clerk, however, is not an independent officer, acting purely on her own devices, accountable to no one. She reports to the Speaker. Ms Holness, therefore, has, or ought to have, a keen interest in this matter, which is of profound importance to taxpayers. It must be handled with urgency and transparency, including, if indeed the process broke down, who was responsible and if there are other issues in Parliament that need fixing.