Anti-corruption agency wanted

TAMARA SCOTT-WILLIAMS

Sunday, September 26, 2010

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, British Parliamentarian, 1770

IT'S not new, but little attention was paid to it way back in 2008 when leader of the People's National Party Portia Simpson Miller first introduced the party's Progressive Agenda and then trotted it out in a series of public consultations and forums. At the time, it seemed vague rage against having lost the election of 2007.

The PNP's Progressive Agenda (not to be confused with the party's manifesto) is the result of an organised attempt to examine the good, the bad and the ugly of the 18 years of PNP rule, prior to the election. The lessons from this process have been redacted into a "five-plank" platform of human resource development; creation of a safe and just society; accountability and responsibility; foreign policy; and economic growth and sustainable development that the party plans to use to lead it to victory in the next two years.

I won't expand on the five planks. I'll leave that to Dr Peter Phillips' PR machinery, now that he's the PNP's national campaign director. But while it might sound like the usual noise of a party's manifesto — a government in waiting that will empower a society through education and opportunity, make our citizens feel safe and secure, give us jobs, jobs, jobs, and ensure justice for all, yadda, yadda, yadda -- there is one plank which has been expressed in a most interesting way.

Lisa Hanna, member of parliament for South East St Ann, PNP chairman for Region One and the youngest member of parliament along with PNP treasurer Senator Mark Golding, and that gentle giant Julian Robinson, PNP deputy general secretary, appeared on TVJ's All Angles last Wednesday night to promote the new thrust and new energy of the PNP after their weekend annual conference. The only person missing from that good-looking line-up was 'Mr Dynamite' himself, Raymond Pryce, chairman of The Patriots, the young professionals' affiliate of the PNP.

But back to the show. Now, Lisa's a bright woman, very bright, maybe too bright for simple folk like me, for I must admit that when she started talking about the "value-added holistic integration of agriculture..." my head started to hurt and I tuned out.

But then when, in expanding on the promise to hold decision makers in the public and private sectors to a high level of integrity, she said that the "electorate has to take some degree of responsibility for holding us accountable", that's when my ears pricked up.

That one line, folks — if it can be transmuted from an idea into a system or a process that can be used by the people of Jamaica without fear or favour — will be the turnaround for this country. I, for one, promise to continue using this small voice to point out the wrongs as I see them, and the rights too.

We all want the country to turn around, but we allow the wrongs to continue simply because we 'fraid to talk. If we complain we might suffer, we think. We'll be victimised, we think. One of the few people unafraid to talk is the contractor general, Greg Christie, who has said that corruption is so embedded in national life that it is strangling Jamaica to death.

But of late, every time Christie opens his mouth to speak of the ills, he's either derided or ignored. And his repeated calls for the establishment of an independent national anti-corruption agency and a special corruption court have largely been brushed aside.

As a result, the contractor general is beginning to wonder about the relevance of his office. That's not a good thing because, as he says, "what appears to be our failure, to date, as a nation is to come to grips with the realisation that corruption in Jamaica may have already condemned a large percentage of our fellowmen and women to a dismal winter of relative poverty".

And so, if there is a way that either party can rid itself of the scourge that suggests every politician is corrupt, and if either party can demonstrate its commitment to reforming its image by removing the liars, thieves and trough-feeders from its membership and associations, and if either party can establish a proper vehicle through which the electorate can meaningfully and safely participate in this purging, then perhaps we all can rise above the notion that regardless of which party leads, we'll always only have a chicken-back government.

But up until this point it's only been talk. What we need now is action, not a bag of words. Let's see both sides set their house in order by pushing for and establishing an independent national anti-corruption agency in which the public can participate. That would be real progress.

scowicomm@gmail.com

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Anti-corruption agency wanted