The Integrity Commission is toothless

May 27, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Integrity Commission is empowered to receive and demand financial declarations from persons in public office. But its members are also required to submit their own declarations to the President.
One past President of Guyana seemed to have been in receipt of information as to which members of parliament were defaulters when it came to submitting their annual financial declarations to the Commission. There was no way that such information should have been shared with any President but it seems that it was back then when there was no formal Commission in place.
The only declaration which the President is required to see is his own and that of the members of the Integrity Commission. The new Integrity Commission, today, seems to be working with greater alacrity but that does not mean that it is any more effective than its predecessor.
On May 12, 2019, the Integrity Commission published in the Official Gazette, a total of 74 office holders who it said had not submitted declarations for 2018. The list included specified offices in the Ministry of Finance, the Civil Defense Commission and Guyana Elections Commission, Castellani House, the Ethnic Relations Commission, the Guyana Energy Authority, the Guyana Rice Development Board, the Guyana School of Agriculture, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (including a factory manager), the Tourism Authority, the Guyana Water Authority, the Institute of Applied Science and Technology and the Human Rights Commission.
The Integrity Commission Act requires specified (not all) public officers to submit annual declarations. Schedule 1 specifies the persons who are required to declarations of financial disclosure under the said Act.
Section 45 designates other categories and positions as persons who can be considered as persons in public life. But it does not require these persons to make a financial disclosure except where a complaint is lodged for a violation of the code of conduct under the Integrity Commission Act.
Both the 1st Schedule and Section 45 provides an exhaustive listing of office holders who are required to submit declarations, the first set annually and the second set following a complaint made. The Integrity Commission therefore has to the full authority to demand declarations from defaulters.
This year, the Integrity Commission caught a number of public officers off guard. Many of them had never been asked to submit declarations in the past and probably did not know that they were so required. The Integrity Commission, in the first instance, is asking for persons in public office to comply with the law.
But what sense does it make to ask persons to comply with the law by submitting declarations when the Integrity Commission does not have, as yet, the capability to scrutinise those declarations or the powers to sanction any public office.
The Integrity Commission should have been limiting the number of persons in public office submitting declarations so that this process of scrutinising them does not become unwieldy. Right now, the Integrity Commission does not have the capability – and probably never will have – to investigate fully 10% of the declarations, which it has received.
In other words, both Schedule is too exhaustive. The Integrity Commission should, for now, limit itself to considering the declarations in respect to the more politically exposed persons such as Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Heads of Tender Boards and Heads of Government corporations. Middle-level and low-level managers including factory managers should, for now, be off of the Integrity Commission’ radar.
It is good in principle for all persons who are required to do so to submit their declarations. This is good in principle but what sense does it make when there is limited investigative capacity.
Investigating assets of public officers requires forensic financial skills.  Recently it was reported that the Integrity Commission had advertised for investigators. The minimum qualifications required 5 subjects at CSEC and three years’ experience in conducting investigations. That is not the sort of qualifications, which are needed to determine whether persons are concealing or misrepresenting their income and assets.  The Integrity Commission is looking for clerks not investigators.
All the Integrity Commission is doing is collecting paperwork to fill its storage shelves. Asking persons in public life to submit their declarations will not improve transparency or accountability unless this backed with powers to sanction these officers. And that my friends, is a power which will never be granted to the Integrity Commission.

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