Editorial | MPs not being picked on

If Marlene Malahoo Forte’s statement were taken at face value, it might have been assumed that parliamentarians are hard done by the Integrity Commission (IC) while other public officials get a free pass.

Cynics might even accuse the legal and constitutional affairs minister of fishing for public sympathy and attempting to drive the IC into a scramble to rebalance its approach, ensuring equity for all groups.

Of course, Ms Malahoo Forte would never have wilfully implied a deliberate imbalance in the IC’s conduct. And insofar as it happened, it would not have been intentional. It could only have been because she was misinformed by advisers of the formula used by the IC in determining whose annual income, assets and liabilities filings were subjected to deep dives. In other words, she might not have herself read the IC’s recent annual reports, including its note on how it approaches these matters.

The Integrity Commission is Jamaica’s primary anti-corruption agency. It polices the award and execution of government contracts. It also has power to investigate allegations of state officials using their public office for private gain, and institute prosecution of those officials if it determines that a case has been established against them.

Indeed, the law requires that the 84 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, public servants who earn J$3.5 million or more, as well as specified officials make declarations of their wealth. That, in 2022, was a total of 44,353 people, of whom 71 per cent met their March 2023 filing deadline. Legislators tend to be better than other groups at fulfilling this obligation on time; 96 per cent had their documents in by the due date. But it is usually higher, at 99 per cent.

EFFICACY QUESTIONED

In recent times, though, it has been the habit of government MPs to launch undermining assaults against the commission, claiming bias in how it manages investigations and handles reports on allegations of corruption. This attitude towards the commission would certainly not have figured in Malahoo Forte’s intervention at an October 31 meeting of a parliamentary oversight committee for the IC, which discussed the commission’s suggestion that the salary threshold at which public officials file declarations be raised to J$12 million. The increase would exempt an estimated 10,000 public officials who now make declarations.

The minister questioned the efficacy of the method used by the IC for reviewing statutory filings, and seemed to suggest that parliamentarians received undue attention. Other public officials: not so much.

“If the fight against corruption is premised on a knowledge of whether your assets reflect your income, then how will you know if the vast majority of the declarations remain unexamined?” she asked. “Something is amiss.”

Malahoo Forte added: “Parliamentarians are not the only category of people whose integrity in public life needs to be under scrutiny. We are an important part of public life, but a small part, and the compliance rate is high, yet the focus is uneven. When you turn the spotlight on one category, you leave others in the dark. I want to know what is happening to those in the shadows.”

These, on the face of it, without more, seem quite legitimate observations, especially when looked at against the backdrop of the IC disclosure of having in 2022 examined a mere 563 declarations, none of which, as would be expected, related to filings for that year. The declarations subjected to this deeper, time-consuming analysis were equivalent to 1.8 per cent of all the filings for that year. Seventy-four per cent of the reviewed filings were certified, suggesting that a quarter (26 per cent) were subjected to even deeper investigations.

HIGHER RISK PROFILE

There is something else to be noted with respect to these reviews, which Ms Malahoo Forte probably overlooked in her reading of the IC 2022-23 report: which is, the commission’s explanation that it uses “a risk-based approach and stratified random sampling” in determining what to look at. This methodology is not dissimilar to what is employed in many other jurisdictions.

While Malahoo Forte could reasonably question the overall number of declarants the IC chooses for its deep dives, properly used stratified random sampling, adjusted for the risk profiles of the groups under scrutiny, would allow the commission to arrive at an appropriate cross-section of public officials who received extra attention.

What is also important is the outcomes of these reviews. The IC reported that after its analyses, “32 public officials and seven parliamentarians were referred for investigation”. In other words, legislators accounted for only one per cent of all declarants chosen for reviews who ended up being recommended for further investigations and auditing. Other public officials were six per cent.

Further, while public focus has been on attempting to unmask the six unnamed legislators the commission said in its 2022-23 report it is investigating for illicit enrichment, the agency also disclosed that it was doing the same with 28 (nearly five times the number of parliamentarians) public officials. This disclosure has had little attention.

Legislators are not being picked on and others given a pass. It is nonetheless probable that the IC concluded that legislators, especially those in the executive, carry a higher risk profile than other groups.