The Jamaican government appears to be losing the battle when it comes to fighting corruption, based on the latest World Bank data. Last year, the island’s ‘control of corruption’ indicator stood at 38.4 per cent, the lowest it has been since 1996.

The indicator, which “measures the exercise of public power for private gain, including both petty and grand corruption and state capture”, is one of six governance indicators used to evaluate the performance of governments in 209 countries between 1996 and 2004.

Yesterday, Information Minister Burchell Whiteman questioned the accuracy of the assessment, saying the World Bank was not infallible, and he would like to know more about the data used and how it was analysed.

“Considering all that has happened in the areas of corruption prevention .I would have to gauge what they say against the reality of what we know we have done in Jamaica,” the minister said, after being told of the report.

Whiteman argued that with the legislative and systemic changes that have been made, the World Bank’s assessment of the government’s effectiveness in controlling corruption was “somewhat uncharitable”.

“(The issue of) using public power for private gain is really a very serious thing because it’s saying you’re using your state office to feather your own nest or the nest of your friends and family. And I don’t know that that is the case,” he said. “I would really love to know what particular cases they are citing for that sort of thing.”

He added: “Just on a first assessment, based on what you are telling me, I would take a lot of convincing to say this is a justified comment.”

While stressing that he was not saying the media should not report corruption, Whiteman said there was the danger of some international bodies basing their analysis on media reports that were sometimes coloured by perception.

But Audley Shaw, Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) deputy leader and spokesman on finance and the public service, said he did not find the World Bank report “surprising in the least”.

He has consistently argued that the P J Patterson-led administration lacks the will to get rid of corruption.

“While there has been a lot of lip service given to fighting corruption, there has been precious little that has been done,” Shaw said. “We have a toothless Corruption Prevention Commission, so against that background, we see things taking place before our very eyes.”

According to World Bank data, there has been a steady worsening of the government’s efforts to control corruption over the last six years – the index has moved from 54.6 in 1998, to 52.7 in 2000, and 40.3 in 2002.

Last year’s figure was 28.6 per cent below the regional average, which stood at 67.

The World Bank report was published in May, coincidentally the same month that Prime Minister P J Patterson – who has in the past rejected the argument that his administration is plagued by corruption – summoned the permanent secretaries of all government ministries to a meeting to discuss corruption.

Patterson has given permanent secretaries until the end of this month to appoint ethics officers who will monitor the ethical conduct of the staff in respective ministries and their agencies.

Critics have long pointed to the difficulty in dismissing civil servants suspected of corruption, but Patterson has promised that the Evidence Act and the Public Bodies (Management and Accountability) Act were being amended, along with a review of the powers of commissions, as the government moved to step up its fight against corruption and to improve governance.

But despite these steps, Shaw argued last week that the government has an interest in maintaining the status quo.

The staffing of the Corruption Prevention Commission with only part-time commissioners, he said, was an indication of the Patterson administration’s reluctance to tackle corruption head-on.

“The government is giving corruption tacit support because they are the beneficiaries when it comes to election campaign time,” he said.

“That is when some of the surpluses that have been built up from their ill-gotten gains end up in political campaigns so that they can go out there, tell all their lies, spend all their money, try to curry favour and get to win again so they can continue the programme of the perpetual plundering of the public purse.”

Over the years, the Patterson administration has been rocked by several scandals that have fuelled critics’ assertions that there is some level of corruption at various levels within the system.

One of the most recent incidents that raised eyebrows involved allegations of mismanagement at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), a claim that the former board members, who have all resigned, have steadily rejected. There were allegations that the agency had become a “feeding tree” for political activists and other politically connected persons.

And a few years ago, there was the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC)/Operation Pride affair, which culminated in 87 counts of fraud being brought against well-known PNP supporter, businessman Danhai Williams and six others.

They were charged in connection with allegations of corruption in the state-run Pride programme.

“Is that case just going to languish in the courts until one day you hear that it’s adjourned sine die?” Shaw asked.

“In many other countries that have faced serious problems of corruption, what they have done is to put in place fast-track systems of prosecuting cases of corruption that involve the corrupt use of government funds. Some countries have appointed special prosecutors.

These are the kinds of areas in which the laws should be looked at with a view to strengthening them,” he added.

The JLP, he said, wanted to see either additional powers given to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) or a special prosecutor appointed to deal with corruption.

“That person could very well be assigned to the Corruption Prevention Commission,” Shaw said. “The Opposition has been putting forward positions like these.”

Other proposals that the JLP has put on the table, he added, include calling for changes made in the Contractor General’s Act that will make it a criminal act for anyone to bypass the contracts commission.

“It is one of the steps that the Opposition is proposing in order to tighten up on things and to stop this wholesale ignoring of the contracts commission,” he said of the bill tabled by JLP leader Bruce Golding last week.

Single-source contracts must be the exception rather than the rule, Shaw said, and approved only after the contracts commission is convinced that there are no other competitive bidders. These calls stemmed from cases like the Sandals Whitehouse project, which has racked up massive cost overruns, he said.

And though Prime Minister Patterson has already given the Sandals Whitehouse project a clean bill of health, saying there had been no evidence of corruption there, Shaw warned that the JLP had a lot more to say about the project.

They were simply awaiting Patterson’s response to questions that Karl Samuda, the spokesman on foreign affairs and foreign trade, had raised in Parliament recently.

“If it does not go to a commission of enquiry, the issue might have to go to the DPP,” Shaw said.

“Don’t see that as an idle threat.”