I ADMIRE ROY MORRIS for being so bold as to, not only mention that “C” word in two of his recent articles, but to go further and document examples. Before that, it seemed only calypsonians were allowed to say the word and get away with it.
For example, Classic in his calypso In Bed Together talks about “lawmakers and their corrupt friends in bed together, politicians and insurance men in bed together, investors and their government friends in bed together” and so on, coming to the conclusion that “you can’t trust a fellow”. He won the crown with that song and we saw our Prime Minister presenting him with his award.
Roy Morris claims that “if Barbados was ever free of corruption, it is no longer so . . . . [It] is endemic and no matter how much we pretend, it will not change the reality”.
Yet, corruption is generally spoken of in hushed tones, since of course we were rated 17th out of 175 countries (and the highest in the Caribbean) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2014, so we couldn’t possibly be corrupt could we? But I would love to know how they come up with the ratings, since corruption isn’t usually overt, but instead well concealed, and those who practise it are masters of the art.
Interestingly though, Barbados isn’t listed at all in the 2015 Index due to “insufficient survey information”. Does that mean information isn’t so accessible now? In other words, we aren’t transparent, so we might be corrupt and don’t know it?
All the more reason for the speeding up of the Freedom Of Information Act which has been languishing from 2008 and the long promised integrity legislation. Can anyone give us a revised estimate of when these will be brought before parliament?
Our Prime Minister has reportedly said that if anybody anywhere in Barbados has any evidence that any member of the Cabinet of Barbados is corrupt they should bring their evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Why is his call limited to members of the Cabinet? Isn’t all corruption distasteful?
Just after the 2013 election, both the Prime Minister and the Attorney General were reported to have expressed serious concern about alleged vote buying, a form of corruption. The Prime Minister vowed to take action to stamp out this illegal practice.
But in spite of the issue being raised again last year by two prominent businessmen, Andy Armstrong and Andrew Bynoe, we’ve seen no obvious action taken to date. Can the Prime Minister tell us whether he has taken any information to the Director of Public Prosecutions and what the outcome was?
Campaign financing also introduces another type of corruption. There’s always talk about reviewing the methods of campaign financing to eliminate the possibility of favouritism to businesses who allegedly donated to the winning party, but nothing seems to come out of this talk and we continue to hear rumours of unfair advantage being given to selected businesses. Is any of this information available to be taken to the Director of Public Prosecutions? Or will we continue to hear the rumours about secret deals and “brown envelopes”? We’re nearing another election. Dare we hope that something will be done to prevent such happenings or will our pleas fall on deaf ears?
Maybe what we need is an equivalent of Crime Stoppers – Corruption Stoppers – where anonymous information can be fed to the agency via an overseas telephone number. But of course information is useless if it’s not acted on.
Every day we hear “our country is crumbling – what can we do?” As the piece from the Shekinah Medical Centre in the last Sunday Sun states, “we need to clean up our act, sort out our problems with our own solutions and get back on track. We have the brains, we have the tools, we have the people, we need to be top-class, not world-class.”
There’s no lack of suggestions put forward by people from a variety of fields. But unfortunately, our Government has taken Norman Vincent Peale’s recommendation to the extreme and are “imperturbable”. Even as they witness our demise, they seem unmoved, not wanting to hear anything from anyone.
• Dr Frances Chandler is a former Independent senator. Email: [email protected]
