Editorial | Watch IC committee

There were two developments last week in Parliament’s oversight committee for the Integrity Commission (IC) to which Jamaicans must pay attention.

One is the clear wish by the committee’s chairman, Edmund Bartlett, to relitigate Speaker Juliet Holness’ grudging ruling that investigative reports by the IC would be immediately tabled rather than first going to Mr Bartlett’s committee for review – and to potentially languish in parliamentary purgatory.

The other matter is the continued attempt by Delroy Chuck, the justice minister, to rush the IC into concluding its investigations, and issue findings, on the six parliamentarians and 18 public officials being probed for illicit enrichment.

The fact that the names of the people being investigated are not known, Mr Chuck complained, throws a cloud of suspicion over all parliamentarians.

“To my mind, those members, whoever they are, if they can’t clear it up (the IC’s apparent concern that their wealth may be out of sync with their known incomes) then we need some indication from the Integrity Commission [about] what is being done,” he told the oversight committee, an argument similar to one he made at a previous meeting in December.

To deal with Mr Chuck’s contention first. This newspaper shares a bit of the minister’s anxiety over the length of time that it is taking for the IC to conclude its investigations as well as his concern for those members of parliament (among whom, he says, he is numbered) who are not being investigated yet fall under suspicion. The House, after all, is a relatively small universe of 63 people, unlike the wider public sector where over 40,000 employees meet the bar for filing income and wealth declarations with the commission.

“Everybody asks me on the street: Are you one of the six?” Mr Chuck said. “It is not fair … . They need to clear this thing up.”

POTENTIALLY COMPLEX

But in the context of serious, and potentially complex, investigations, these probes are, on its face, not as yet overly long. They were disclosed by the IC last July as part of its annual report, as is required by law, of its work over the preceding year.

However, the IC was prohibited by the so-called gag clause in the Integrity Commission Act from naming persons who are being investigated, or the nature of those investigations, until the probes are completed and reports are tabled in Parliament.

It is in Parliament’s gift, however, to expunge, repeal, or amend Section 53 (3) of the act, which says: “Until the tabling of a report under Section 36, all matters under investigation by the director of investigation or such other involved in such investigation shall be kept confidential and no report or public statement shall be made by the commission or other person in relation to the initiation or conduct of an investigation under this Act.”

The commission has proposed that it be given discretion to announce, at its start, that an investigation has been initiated, without providing a running commentary on the probe.

Further, to address Mr Chuck’s immediate concern, there is, thus far, no interpretation of the law that a person who is being investigated, and who has to be told that he is, cannot disclose that fact.

The gag clause was supposedly intended to protect people’s privacy and reputations until they are deemed to have committed an offence. It does not remove from a class of people the right to declare, as Mr Chuck has done, and all MPs can do, that ‘it is not me’.

CAVED IN

With respect to Mr Bartlett’s manoeuvre, it is recalled that after a fraught public debate, during which she withheld the attorney general’s opinion on the matter, Speaker Holness eventually caved in on her previous ruling that all reports from the IC would first go to Mr Bartlet; committee before being tabled. Investigation reports initiated by the IC and those called for by Parliament would be tabled immediately.

That the commission’s annual reports and special reports would first be deliberated on by Mr Bartlett’s committee remained in place. The potential negative impact of aspects of that ruling for transparency are obvious – although not, apparently, to Mr Bartlett.

Last week, the oversight committee received a number of investigative reports that had been previously tabled in the House, including one that led to a former MP, Dwayne Vaz, as well as a senior public official, pleading guilty for failing to provide follow-up information to the IC about the statutory filings within the given time.

Mr Bartlett, and others, whinged about “the relevance of review after the committee has seen the reports all over town by way of media and all kinds of publications”.

He added: “We want to look at the Standing Orders (Parliament’s rules) in relation to that, and I have already put on record that we will remove the position because it makes little sense, in my mind, for us to review and report on a matter that is already in the public space.”

The law says that these reports should be tabled. Speaker Holness was advised that they should be – and eventually acquiesced.

A relevant question to Mr Bartlett is whether the oversight committee would wish to revise, amend or reject IC reports that come before it. And in the case of those for which matters went before the courts last week, for which people pleaded guilty, would the committee recommend a different legal process and/or outcome?