Letter of the Day | Corruption? - The ghost that haunts Jamaica

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Caribbean writer Martin Munro (2015) utilised literary and metaphorical allusion of ghosts in his anthology, The Haunted Tropics: Caribbean Ghost Stories. The metaphorical allusion to ghosts refers to spatial norms, values, ideologies and predominant practices that hinder the development of many Caribbean countries, including Jamaica. In light of the Jamaica’s Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck’s unsavoury comments about the non-investigation of family members and spouses of the political officials by the Integrity Commission, and the auditor general’s recent finding that an estimated $3 trillion has gone unaccounted for across 16 government agencies and ministries for the last 11 years, have brought to the fore that not only is corruption a rampant staple in our country’s political affairs, but it is a perennial ghost that thwarts our social and economic development. Data from the Caribbean Policy Research Institute has shown that corruption reduces foreign direct investment in key or higher-valued added sectors that promote productivity and economic growth.

Corruption significantly erodes our citizens’ trust in public officials and the legitimacy of political institutions. This is evident in the fact that Jamaica has registered scores below 50 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index from 2007 to 2023, which means that our country has a serious corruption problem.

VAST DISPARITY

Minister Delroy Chuck’s comments about the parameters of the investigation by the Integrity Commission do not only represent serious efforts by the government administration to weaken anti-corruption capacity of the Integrity Commission, but is also rather shameless. His comments are shameless and misguided because the government administration of which he is a part, particularly Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, was investigated by the Integrity Commission on multiple occasions, including but not limited to the vast disparity between ownership of assets and his lawful reported income, and deliberately omitting information on his statutory declarations for 2019-2022 to the Integrity Commission. His comments disregard that harsh reality that there are international trends in the struggle against the proceeds of crime or corrupt practices, such as nepotism, clientèlism, political patronage in the public and private sectors, fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing, that demonstrate that politically exposed persons conceal the proceeds of crime in the names of spouses and family members of politicians, or other high-ranking public officials. Despite the fact that Jamaica has made improvements in the fight against money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, and was ranked largely compliant with 33 out of 44 recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force, there are several technical deficiencies in the local compliance framework, such as inadequate mechanisms to provide information on national risk assessments.

Calls for strengthening anti-corruption, transparency and accountability among various civil society organisations, including the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal and the National Integrity Action not only underscore the importance of establishing institutions that bring procedural justice to our citizens, but (indicate) there is a dire need for our governance capacity to move away from a politics that is predicated on wasteful spending of public funds without transparency and for private gain. Prioritising the restoration of trust between our citizens and government and public institutions is an imperative for ridding ourselves of corruption– the ghost that haunts Jamaica!

TINA RENIER