Government is looking to pass legislation that will give the Integrity Commission the power to go after public officials who fail to declare their assets in a timely manner, according to Minister of State Joseph Harmon.
“I can assure you that it is something that we are very concerned about so that people who are in public life cannot then start making demands that you declare before I declare…,” he said at a post-Cabinet press briefing last Friday. “It would be law that by a certain time of the year, you declare your assets and if you don’t then the commission has the power to do certain things about it.” He said though that the commissioners have not been sworn in; a process that will have to wait until Parliament comes out of recess.
Harmon told reporters that during a meeting with staff of the commission about two weeks ago, he had assured them that as soon as the work of the National Assembly allowed for the appointment of these commissioners, they will be appointed.
Pointing out that work is being done by a CEO and a small staff with a very limited budget, he said, “The question of course is the appointment of the commissioners. There were some commissioners who were recommended in the tenth parliament but the president did not appoint them.
What that means is that the recommendations have lapsed and therefore have to go back to the National Assembly for new persons to be appointed.”
Harmon informed that “It may very well be us recognizing that those persons who are there would have gone through a process and may very well say let us agree to this but it has to have the stamp of the eleventh Parliament which would then be taken to the president for his signature.”
He said that as of now the Integrity Commission is “a commission without commissioners.”
According to Harmon, government did indicate that it was going to have a fresh look at the mandate of the commission.
He said that during a meeting with the staff, views were expressed that “The commission did not have enough power to enforce any of its decisions. That the fact that public officials would just submit to the commission and there is no clear procedure after that; we needed to ensure that there was some mechanism within the law to allow for follow up… I did in fact discuss that matter with the CEO, that there were models in Trinidad, in Barbados and all across this region where submissions to the Integrity Commission were subjected to further scrutiny,” he said.
According to Harmon, during the meeting, he pointed out that in the past statements taken before the commission were not followed up. “We wanted an Integrity Commission that in the first place had integrity and in the second place had the capacity to follow up when statements are made by public officers… that need to be followed up” and action taken, he said.
For years, the commission has been a controversial issue as even though the PPP/C administration had sworn-in members in 1999, its work was curtailed after its chairman, Bishop Randolph George resigned in 2006. The Secretariat of the Commission has in the past placed notices calling on those public officials coming under its jurisdiction to submit returns. Shortly after the 2011 elections, then Prime Minister Sam Hinds had said the Donald Ramotar administration would have shortly sworn-in new members of the commission but this was never done.
While in opposition APNU and the AFC had stressed the need for such a commission and when they formed a coalition in February this year they had stressed that once they were voted in the commission would have been reactivated with urgency.
