HIS government battered by allegations of mismanagement and rampant corruption, Prime Minister P J Patterson last week unveiled a code of conduct by which he expects his ministers to abide.

But the response, at best, is lukewarm. Few of the people who follow these things, while welcoming the initiative, believe that it will make much difference unless it has real teeth.

For it is not so much that laws and regulations do not exist to fight corruption, some say, but rather a weakness in enforcement.

“The monitoring and enforcement of it (the code of conduct) I hope will be done by a group of people selected without bias of party or any other such thing — a group of outstanding Jamaicans of the highest integrity,” says Col Trevor MacMillan, who served as police commissioner in the mid-1990s and is now a regular commentator on integrity issues.

Nonetheless, MacMillan says that the code is “long overdue”.

“I certainly support it,” he adds.

The code that Patterson has crafted for his cabinet ministers and their deputies, is modelled off one that was developed for British ministers at a time when they were under scrutiny for sleaze and influence peddling. Which is a central theme in Patterson’s code.

He, for instance, tells his ministers to “scrupulously avoid any danger of an actual or apparent conflict of interest between their ministerial position and their private financial interests” and reminds that decisions should be taken “solely in terms of public interest”.

Says the code of conduct: “In order to avoid the danger of an actual or perceived conflict of interest, ministers should be guided in relation to their financial interests by the general principle that they should either dispose of any financial interest giving rise to the actual or perceived conflict or take alternative steps to prevent it.”

Where a member of the government cannot dispose of the asset causing the conflict of interest, the code of conduct stipulates that the matter should be brought to the attention of the prime minister and failing his attempt at resolution, “in such a case it may be necessary for the minister (minister of state or parliamentary secretary) to cease to hold the office in question”.

Frank Phipps, a highly respected criminal lawyer, who chairs the think-tank, the Farquharson Institute of Public Affairs, however, doubts that the code will be effective in reducing allegations of corruption against ministers.

Previous measures, he notes, have failed.

Phipps would do something radical, which would require an overhaul of the Jamaican constitution.

“My recommendation is that the ministers should be in the Senate and the House of Representatives should have the power to haul them up to justify, for example, the loss in the information technology sector or justify the (Operation) PRIDE loss or any loss or any conduct that suggests conflict of interest,” he says.

At present, under the constitution, only four ministers can be from the Senate, an appointed body, and none of those ministers can be the minister of finance, who has to come from the elected House of Representatives.

In fact, constitutional reform has been on the agenda for a long time and was the major platform for the National Democratic Movement (NDM) when it was formed by Bruce Golding in 1995 after he resigned as chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party. Neither the JLP nor the ruling People’s National Party has as yet spoken with clarity on how they would like to see the government structured, although the JLP has suggested its preference for a modified Westminster system.

From Phipps’ perspective, it is important to have both oversight and for parliamentarians to have a little temptation as possible for corruption.

He says: “Members of parliament must be paid the same salaries as a minister and must live in their constituencies and be responsible only to the electorate. I feel very strongly about that.

“Parliament must clean up its own stables. The minister is not a part of the House of Representatives, which should therefore monitor the work of the ministers.”

According to the Code, all members of the government are expected to adhere strictly to provisions of the Parliament (Integrity of Members) Act and failure to do so could lead to the prime minister calling for the resignation of delinquent members. In addition, all members of the government are obliged to operate in accordance with the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, by which they are bound.

The Code also points that a minister or public servant should not accept “gifts, hospitality or services from anyone which might appear to place him or her under an obligation, and should take all reasonable steps to prevent this”.

But Phipps, a former Jamaica Labour Party senator, says the scope for corruption among members of parliament (MPs) and senators, by extension, was minimal if not non-existent compared to ministers.

“The MPs are not accused of corruption. It is the ministers,” he stresses. “What is the point of declaring his/her assets when the MP can’t control contacts. I was in the Senate and I resigned because I thought it was a waste of time to be giving credence to something that was not reality.”

Beth Aub, executive director of the local branch of the anti-corruption group, Transparency International, views the code of conduct as “impractical”, charging that it will not hold anyone accountable.

Ministers and other parliamentarians, she says, now regularly flout the Parliament (Integrity of Members) Act.

Under the Parliament (Integrity of Members) Act, members of the Senate and House of Representatives are required to declare their assets, liabilities and income and that of certain members of their immediate families at the end of each calendar year.

The declarations are to be filed by March 31 of the same year. The report of the Integrity Commission for the period that ended December 31, 2001, was tabled in Parliament last week and listed two cabinet ministers, Horace Dalley and Arnold Bertram as outstanding in declaring their assets. Dalley’s arrears stretched back eight years to 1989, while Bertram is outstanding from 1995.

Patterson advised journalists last week that no member of his cabinet was in arrears in filing their declaration of assets, implying that Dalley and Bertram likely filed their declarations after the Commission had completed its recent report.

Opposition member, Mike Henry, who was 12 years in arrears at the time of the previous report, is now current, the Commission reported recently.

The Integrity Commissioners report that up to the end of December last year 17 parliamentarians had not replied to requests for additional information. Two, Karl Samuda and Ronald Thwaites did not produce financial statements for companies that they owned, as requested by the Commission.

The commissioners noted that many parliamentarians were “in continuing breach of the Act wherein they have failed to furnish statutory declaration within the deadline set by the Act, or have failed to furnish the statutory declaration required…”

According to Aub, the Code of Conduct for ministers could suffer the same fate as the Integrity Act, if left to the whim of the prime minister.

She adds: “It should be automatically referred to the Director of Public Prosecution and the same law applies to them (members of government ) as applies to civil servants. I think what we are looking at here is whether it (the Code of Conduct) is a whim of the prime minister or whether it’s the law.”

Despite critics like Phipps and Aub, Danny Roberts, a vice-president the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU) has welcomed the code of conduct and says the JCTU has developed a document entitled ‘A new vision for Jamaica’s socio-political survival and economic growth’ aimed at promoting accountability in Jamaica.

“The document highlighted the need for greater accountability of our public officials and that officials accept the law and that the law is applicable to their conduct,” says Roberts. “It is a document in which we demand that political leaders recognise and accept that good governance demands profound changes to our political process.”