Global Integrity (GI), the international corruption watchdog organization, has turned its focus on Trinidad and Tobago for the first time.

The organization released its 2009 Global Integrity Report (GIR) at the end of February 2010 which featured Trinidad and Tobago among the reporting, making this country now one of the subjects of GI’s “watch list”.

The 2009 Global Integrity “reporter’s notebook” for Trinidad and Tobago zeroed in on the links between the social and economic impact of corruption and lack of transparency as they relate to the Uff Commission of Enquiry into UDECOTT and the unfolding drama surrounding the calling into account of its Chairman, Calder Hart, in the context of maneuverings by the Government and the Opposition and turmoil surrounding appointments and functioning of major oversight institutions.

The report notes that the social and economic tragedy of corruption and opacity are reflected in escalating crime and the continuing lack of basic amenities for citizen despite the country’s oft-touted high GDP. It argues that the events which have brought most of the country’s major institutions under scrutiny, including the judiciary and offices of the Chief Justice, Director of Public Prosecution, the magistracy; the Parliament, various oversight Commissions as the Integrity Commission, the Judicial and Legal Services Commission, the Police Commissioner, the Integrity Commission, and others as the Solicitor General are linked to opaque governance and a disempowered electorate.

The Global Integrity Report is GI’s flagship assessment of national-level anti-corruption mechanisms in countries around the world. The Report is generated by hundreds of local researchers and journalists and includes a robust, double-blind peer review process to ensure accuracy. Rather than trying to measure corruption per se, it assesses the opposite: the existence, effectiveness, and citizen access to key anti-corruption safeguards.

The Report also includes the Global Integrity Index, a ranking of national-level anti-corruption performance that is comparable across countries and over time. The Index is generated by aggregating more than 10,000 scores, comments and references from our team of on-the-ground experts. Unlike many governance and corruption indices, all source data and peer review disputes that go into generating the Global Integrity Index are transparent to the public.

The GI Reporter’s Notebook for T& T was prepared by Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Dr. Kris Rampersad. Given that this was the first year for Trinidad and Tobago and some challenges in data collection needed to be addressed, indicators for this country would not be released for 2009.

Global Integrity looks for possible triggers of “grand corruption” in the countries assessed in the annual Global Integrity Report — countries where certain key anti-corruption safeguards were so weak that the risk of large-scale theft of public resources was greater than in most countries. Its data looks for three red flags: extremely poor conflicts of interest safeguards in government, weak oversight over large state-owned enterprises, and poor or non-existent controls over the flow of money into the political process, based on the rationale to simply: “follow the money” from commercial and special interests to politicians (through political contributions), and then assess whether those officials are sufficiently constrained by conflicts of interest regulations to effectively regulate the large state-owned enterprises whose revenue plays such a large role in many economies. If that data (Government Accountability, State-Owned Enterprises, and Political Financing categories) are all “Very Weak” (below 60) for a country, that country is placed on the Watch List.

Being placed on the Watch List does not necessarily mean that grand corruption and looting of public resources will always take place in the country, but rather that the risks may be significantly higher than in most countries.

Unlike perceptions-based indices, the Global Integrity Index is based on original, empirical on-the-ground research, not on third-party data or information.

The Global Integrity Report has covered more than 100 countries since its inauguration in 2004.

Trinidad and Tobago Global Integrity Notebook Excerpts

The social consequences of corruption in a country of 1.3 million people, an eight percent growth rate and a per capita GDP of US$24,000 is its inability to provide essential services to improve social conditions and life chances of its youths.

As UDeCOTT continues its public work with the vocal support of the prime minister — even while the COE concerning its activities was in session— it is unlikely that issues such as the government’s failure to fill vacancies in its oversight institutions would be reflected in the COE report and may never surface at all.

Local and international agencies tend to focus their anti-corruption efforts on audits, procurement policies, legislation, treaties, conventions, oversight mechanisms such as COEs and transparency organizations. The T&T experience proves that the absence of a culture of integrity and effective checks on power seem to negate these efforts.

Even though the Uff Enquiry is receiving full coverage with televised live hearings and accessible online transcripts, it is not unlike other COEs which fail to find solutions to minimize the effects of the political forces that exploit the fundamental flaws in T&T’s democratic system, creating a climate ripe for corruption. With its bountiful energy resources, this environment allows for  nepotism, “constitutional dictatorship” and political interference that violate the constitutional separation of powers

Even if the current administration appears to respond positively to calls for transparency in government procurement and other areas by creating a fully publicized COE, the reality is that it counts on the unwavering support of voters primarily motivated by ethnicity, fragmentation of the Opposition by infighting, whistle-blowers often made to seem motivated by thwarted political ambitions, and the appropriation of powers through the withholding of appointments to key government oversight posts.

The effectiveness of Enquiries as the Uff CoE is questionable as it is beyond their mandate to gather evidence of the causes of corruption, such as political interference in the police, the courts and other independent public offices, and it is not their duty to investigate whether state organizations are guilty of escalating crime rates, discrimination in state appointments, police corruption, censoring the media, and disregard for civil society and court orders.

“Even as the COE investigating Trinidad and Tobago’s construction sector alleged cost overruns, it is not mandated to probe the runaway costs of state-induced inflation. (The rate was 15% at the time of the formation of the COE and was attributed to rapid increases in infrastructure costs and to recurrent state spending maintained despite warnings by experts.)

Furthermore, the COE has no mandate to investigate possible corruption regarding issues directly or peripherally associated with the enquiry; for example, resignations, rejections of demands to resign, return to office following an individual’s resignation, and calls for resignations of all major public figures, including the President, Prime Minister, two attorney generals, two successive Integrity Commissions, and the resignation of two of the four COE commissioners as the COE was about to resume its fourth session.

This would not be unusual, as Trinidad and Tobago routinely submits opaque performance reports to international organizations such as the Organization of American States’ Committee of Experts of the Mechanism for Follow-up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (OAS and MESICIC, respectively).

For instance, in its latest report to MESICIC, Trinidad and Tobago checks off most of the relevant boxes regarding questions about its existing anti-corruption mechanisms; but when it comes to assessments of actual performance in this area, it invariably and obliquely responds: “No data is available at this time.”

It is MESICIC policy to promote properly resourced, equipped and functioning oversight mechanisms; decentralization and citizen participation in decision making; and laws that protect whistle-blowers as instruments to strengthen democracy. Nevertheless, as Trinidad and Tobago was hosting 33 continent leaders at the OAS Summit in 2009, several contradictory realities coexisted in the country.

• There was no sitting Integrity Commission.
• More than seven key posts demanded by the T&T Constitution remained vacant.
• An amendment to the Integrity in Public Life Act that implicitly discourages whistle blowing was being piloted through parliament.
• Local government elections were postponed for a third consecutive year as the local government minister — the prime minister’s wife — pushed legislation to effectively shift more authority to the central government.
• The prime minister championed a new draft constitution which threatens to further contain the democratic spread of power and subsume oversight commissions’ functions to the Attorney General (AG).
• Media and labor sectors faced the threat of legislation that would limit free expression.

As Trinidad and Tobago prepared to host 53 states at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2009, where removing corruption through decentralization, citizen participation, transparency and accountability are high on its democratic agenda, the following developments took place:

• Trinidad and Tobago citizens await an accounting of how the CHOGM is being funded, as the government already overspent the US$503 million budget for both summits by five million on the OAS Summit alone.
• Local government elections have been postponed for a fourth consecutive year;
• Appointments to the Integrity Commission and the constitutionally established bodies remain vacant;
• The prime minister has called for the offices of the Chief Justice and others to be brought under more direct political control of the AG’s office, while proposing changes to the country’s Constitution so that the task of hiring, firing and disciplining are removed from the constitutionally independent police, Teaching Public Service Commission and other government ministries.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 at 11:37 AM and is filed under Corruption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.