Malis­sa Lara-Pat­ter­son

Q: What would you say has been most chal­leng­ing about your life?

A: My great­est chal­lenge in life has been to find a rea­son to be­lieve in my­self.In the twi­light years of my life, I now can ad­mit that I have made a use­ful con­tri­bu­tion to my pro­fes­sion and coun­try but that was not al­ways the case. If my peers at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools had been asked to vote on my po­ten­tial, I would have won the vote for the stu­dent least like­ly to suc­ceed. I was the lat­est of all the late starters in my class­es. Thank­ful­ly, I was blessed with per­se­ver­ance sec­ond to none and that has en­abled me to stay in the race and some­times come out on top.

Q: How long have you been a civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tivist?

When in my mid-20s I re­turned home from the UK as a Char­tered Quan­ti­ty Sur­vey­or, I was con­cerned to find the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor dom­i­nat­ed by ex­pa­tri­ates and in the ab­sence of oth­er lead­er­ship, I took it up­on my­self to mo­ti­vate oth­ers to work with me to change the sta­tus quo. The re­sul­tant suc­cess in T&T led me to pur­sue and achieve sim­i­lar suc­cess else­where in the East­ern Caribbean. As a re­sult, I dis­cov­ered that, if the cause was right, I could bring pas­sion to it and be a suc­cess­ful ad­vo­cate and that was my start as an ac­tivist for civ­il so­ci­ety caus­es.

Af­ter my ac­tivism in pro­mot­ing my pro­fes­sion, I ran out of ideas and be­gan feel­ing un­sat­is­fied with my life in T&T and re­tired to a qui­et life on a beach in Grena­da. My re­tire­ment was in­ter­rupt­ed in 2002 when I was asked to do na­tion­al ser­vice by serv­ing as a com­mis­sion­er to en­quire in­to the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project. That ex­pe­ri­ence opened my eyes to the na­ture of cor­rup­tion and the harm it could do to my coun­try and I re­solved then to join the T&TTI and de­vote my time to fight­ing cor­rup­tion. My even­tu­al elec­tion as Chair of T&TTI gave me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come en­gaged in na­tion­al is­sues and to trav­el to Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings in USA, Guatemala, Bali and Athens where I learnt more of what civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tivism was all about and, as they say, the rest is his­to­ry.

Q: Has T&T be­come worse in terms of cor­rup­tion in your view?

A: In my view, cor­rup­tion in T&T has got worse in terms of scale. The ex­cess­es that we wit­nessed in the last ten years far ex­ceed­ed what we saw pre­vi­ous­ly. How­ev­er, the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of cor­rup­tion have not changed. As a peo­ple, we are still too tol­er­ant of cor­rup­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly pet­ty cor­rup­tion, and that leads to the turn­ing of a blind eye to­wards wrong-do­ing and the fail­ure to in­sist on hold­ing peo­ple ac­count­able for their ac­tions. Thank­ful­ly, we are hear­ing state­ments from the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment that in­spire hope that there will be greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors than be­fore and that 'those who do the crime will serve the time'. I look for­ward to those promis­es be­ing kept.

Q: How are we viewed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly?

A: In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, T&T's cor­rup­tion lev­el is viewed through the find­ings of sur­veys such as Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al's Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex (CPI) that mea­sure the per­cep­tion of pub­lic sec­tor cor­rup­tion by for­eign busi­ness per­sons who in­ter­act with pub­lic of­fi­cials and politi­cians when do­ing busi­ness in T&T. On a scale of ze­ro to ten, when ze­ro rep­re­sents the high­est per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion and ten the low­est, T&T has been stuck at a score of 3.6 for the last three years and, in CPI 2010, was ranked 79th of 178 coun­tries world­wide. By com­par­i­son, Bar­ba­dos scored 7.8 and was ranked 17th among the 178 coun­tries.

T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age al­so suf­fered from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's fail­ure to make good on its pub­licly stat­ed in­ten­tion to join the EITI to bring greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to the en­er­gy sec­tor by re­quir­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies to pub­licly de­clare pay­ments made to gov­ern­ment and, in turn, re­quir­ing gov­ern­ment to de­clare pay­ments re­ceived. Hap­pi­ly, the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, on De­cem­ber 8, 2010, an­nounced its in­ten­tion to join the EITI and I hope that, in due course, one of the out­comes of that de­ci­sion would be an im­prove­ment in T&T 's CPI score and rank­ing.

Q: Give a brief sum­ma­ry of the role of the com­mit­tee.

A: The EITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee is a tri­par­tite com­mit­tee made up of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the three stake­hold­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor, viz, gov­ern­ment, en­er­gy com­pa­nies and civ­il so­ci­ety. Its role is to guide the process of T&T's EITI mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion which is a five step process that will take about three years to com­plete:

• Sign up ie, ap­ply­ing to the EITI In­ter­na­tion­al Sec­re­tari­at to be­come a can­di­date coun­try which I hope will be achieved by March 1 2011.

• Prepa­ra­tion ie, putting in place the nec­es­sary sys­tems to man­age the re­ceipt and au­dit­ing of re­ports from com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment.

• Dis­clo­sure ie, re­ceiv­ing of de­c­la­ra­tions and analysing, au­dit­ing and re­port­ing on them.

• Dis­sem­i­na­tion ie, dis­sem­i­nat­ing the EITI Re­port for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, re­view­ing the lessons learnt and prepar­ing to re­peat the process for the next re­port­ing year.

• Val­i­da­tion ie, un­der­tak­ing an ex­ter­nal in­de­pen­dent val­i­da­tion ex­er­cise to sat­is­fy the EITI In­ter­na­tion­al Sec­re­tari­at that T&T ful­ly com­plies with all EITI cri­te­ria then to be el­e­vat­ed to the high­est EITI sta­tus of an EITI Com­pli­ant Coun­try.

Q: In your new po­si­tion, are you go­ing to be a watch­dog over the busi­ness of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries?

My po­si­tion as Chair of the EITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee is to bring an even-hand­ed ap­proach to the de­lib­er­a­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions, de­ci­sions and ac­tions of the oth­er 14 mem­bers of the com­mit­tee. Even though my back­ground is in civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tivism, as chair­man I in­tend to main­tain my in­de­pen­dence from the in­ter­ests rep­re­sent­ed by the three stake­hold­er groups and bring bal­ance to the com­mit­tee's pro­ceed­ings.

When the EITI is ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, the EITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee will con­tin­ue its over­see­ing role to en­sure that the ini­tia­tive is work­ing smooth­ly but not as a watch­dog over the ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries. The EITI is a vol­un­tary coali­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor stake­hold­ers who have agreed to a self-reg­u­lat­ing sys­tem of checks and bal­ances that will re­duce the like­li­hood of cor­rup­tion. The EITI is about self-reg­u­la­tion by the en­er­gy sec­tor and I hope that, when the suc­cess in the en­er­gy sec­tor is seen, the mod­el might be adapt­ed for use in oth­er sec­tors.

Q: What have you found thus far? Have you found any dis­crep­an­cies in the han­dling of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries?

The EITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee is less than two months old dur­ing which time we have con­cen­trat­ed on ap­ply­ing for and achiev­ing EITI Can­di­date Coun­try sta­tus by March 1.We are not yet in a po­si­tion to iden­ti­fy dis­crep­an­cies in the ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries, if any, nor will be un­til we have reached the dis­clo­sure stage of the process in about two years. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to join the EITI has sent a strong mes­sage to all par­tic­i­pants in the en­er­gy sec­tor (pub­lic of­fi­cials, lo­cal and for­eign en­er­gy com­pa­nies, in­vestors and civ­il so­ci­ety) that it is no longer 'busi­ness as usu­al'.

There­fore, I ex­pect that greater at­ten­tion will be­gin to be paid from now by all par­tic­i­pants to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty is­sues in the en­er­gy sec­tor with the re­sult that we may find few­er dis­crep­an­cies at the dis­clo­sure stage than oth­er­wise might have been the case.I am of the view that Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to join the EITI is not an in­dict­ment of the en­er­gy sec­tor for be­ing cor­rupt. Rather, it is a recog­ni­tion that any sec­tor that gen­er­ates great wealth is sure to at­tract cor­rupt per­sons who may at­tempt to en­rich them­selves at the ex­pense of the cit­i­zen­ry. There­fore, join­ing EITI is a re­spon­si­ble pre­ven­tive ac­tion that will pro­tect the peo­ple's pat­ri­mo­ny and it should be sup­port­ed by all.

He was the lat­est of all late starters in his class­es, but civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tivist, Vic­tor Hart per­se­vered and rose to be­come a well-re­spect­ed watch­dog against cor­rup­tion in T&T.Hart was called to serve as Com­mis­sion­er to in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project in 2002 and has since as­sumed many oth­er roles.He has served as head of the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (T&TTI) and was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Chair­man of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) Steer­ing Com­mit­tee.Hart took the time to an­swer ques­tions about some of his ex­pe­ri­ences last week.