No better pork, no better barrel

by Peter Espeut

As soon as the People's National Party (PNP) heard about the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP), it knew exactly what was going on. Been there! Done that! PNP officials knew political pork when they smelled it.

And they were right. The Auditor General's Department has just released the report of its special audit of JDIP, and it is a litany of irregularities, breaches of government guidelines, and improprieties.

In the mythical nation of Graftica - not at all like modern Jamaica, you understand - this is how they run t'ings, for the politicians need 'dallahs' to run their campaigns. The system cannot work without a corrupt private sector, which makes political contributions in return for contracts, waivers and permits.

In Graftica, their strategy is to highly inflate contract awards. Let's pull an example out of thin air. If a bridge really costs 100 million dallahs to build, the contract award will be for 500 million dallahs; the extra 400 million will be split between the corrupt private-sector contractor and the party in power (they always have bills to pay).

Graftica has an opposition party hungry for power; it can't wait to win the next election, so its members can put their snouts in the trough, for they have their contractors who long for the pork of the past.

For almost 20 years in this column, I have been pointing out that both major political parties have purposely avoided making breaches of government procurement guidelines a criminal offence; each party, when in power, finds it convenient to ignore these rules intended to make corruption difficult, therefore, it is not in their interest to criminalise one of their most useful strategies to reward some of their political funders.

International norms

One of the goals of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is to ensure that Jamaica follows internationally accepted norms with respect to transparency, integrity and environmental conservation, and any funding they provide must adhere to these standards. In its policy documents, the Jamaican Government claims these internationally accepted norms as its own, so it does not need Big Brother to be watching to ensure that it practises what it preaches.

The Chinese government does not attach to its funding arrangements the same internationally accepted norms with respect to transparency, integrity and environmental conservation as the IDB and the World Bank; but that is not supposed to matter, for we are a sovereign nation, independent almost 50 years. Just because the Chinese do not require tendering does not mean we should abandon our own mandated government procurement guidelines.

It surprises no one that the auditor general has found that the Government's procurement guidelines have been breached. Our deep-seated culture of corruption will trump principle every time.

Just because the Chinese damage their environment back home, and don't require environmental assessments for the projects they fund (unlike the IDB and the World Bank), does not mean we should use this as an opportunity to engage in unsustainable development. Jamaica was forced by the multilaterals to form the Natural Resources Conservation Authority in the 1990s. They would not provide funding if we didn't have an environmental regulatory authority, so we formed it; but both political parties have used every opportunity to circumvent it. Again, our deep-seated culture of corruption will trump principle every time.

Sole-sourcing offence

Sole-sourcing is a breach of all internationally accepted procurement guidelines. Why was the contractor for JDIP sole-sourced? Why could the Government not risk a public tender, which might see its preferred contractor lose to a more economical or competent bidder?

Why was the main subcontractor to JDIP on the Palisadoes highway sole-sourced? Is there any connection between Y.P. Seaton and the party in power (other than arranging bird-shooting junkets to Paraguay)? I am sure that many in the private sector - including Y.P. Seaton - would appreciate all political donations being public knowledge, so that unsavoury allegations are not made when they are awarded lucrative government contracts.

But the impropriety uncovered by the auditor general goes even deeper. Money borrowed to fix Jamaican highway infrastructure has been used to refurbish the offices of the National Works Agency (NWA), without the required tendering and approvals. The Government has been unable to identify works amounting to J$23.2m, which the NWA certified as being satisfactorily completed. Why does this remind me of the three missing schools from the JLP government of the 1960s?

We suffered serious corruption under the PNP, and are now suffering the same under the JLP. No better pork, no better barrel.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and environmentalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.