Gail Alexan­der

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple has called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to stamp out cor­rup­tion in Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing re­ports of a drop in T&T's cor­rup­tion rat­ings in the last year. "It is some­thing the COP is very un­hap­py about," said COP chair­man Joseph Toney yes­ter­day about the re­port­ed drop. Ac­cord­ing to the Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex re­port for 2011, T&T's cor­rup­tion rank­ings have wors­ened over the past year. T&T placed 91 from a list of 183 coun­tries with a score of 3.2 out of 10. In the 2010 re­port, T&T ranked 73 out of 178 with a score of 3.6. The 2011 re­port stat­ed that there were sev­er­al events in the past year that cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise ques­tions about the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion's avowed com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

These in­clude Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's con­tin­ued pres­ence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion and many al­le­ga­tions about im­prop­er pro­cure­ment and poor gov­er­nance prac­tices at some state agen­cies. Toney said yes­ter­day: "We in COP have worked very hard to en­sure pos­i­tive ac­tion against cor­rup­tion and are try­ing to do what we promised the peo­ple so this news is not some­thing we're hap­py about." The COP par­ty, in a state­ment, said: "The Con­gress of the Peo­ple wish­es to re­mind our Gov­ern­ment and the pop­u­la­tion that cor­rup­tion is a mul­ti-faceted crea­ture and no one is ex­empt from its temp­ta­tion. "Hence our de­ci­sion-mak­ers in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors must set the ex­am­ple and the stan­dard," it added. "In oth­er words, our de­ci­sion mak­ers must be like 'Cae­sar's wife.' A word to the wise.

"The COP recog­nis­es that trans­paren­cy in all fi­nan­cial mat­ters of State is a nec­es­sary pre-req­ui­site for good gov­er­nance and must be the prin­ci­ple which guides the de­ci­sion mak­ing process so as to pro­mote good ex­am­ple and dis­ci­pline. "The COP there­fore urges our Gov­ern­ment, and in par­tic­u­lar our dear Prime Min­is­ter, to pur­sue this eye­sore in our pub­lic life with the ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal, fi­nan­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­tures as fur­ther com­mit­ment of our stance against cor­rup­tion in pub­lic af­fairs."

Toney was asked whether COP felt vin­di­cat­ed by the re­port since var­i­ous for­mer COP deputies such as Robert May­ers and oth­er par­ty of­fi­cials who had com­plained about PP op­er­a­tions and prac­tices by UNC of­fi­cials dom­i­nat­ing the Gov­ern­ment. Toney said: "Any smell of cor­rup­tion with­in the cor­ri­dors of Gov­ern­ment is some­thing the COP ab­hors and we'll en­sure as we pro­ceed that this stain doesn't come to the Gov­ern­ment...we'll be work­ing to rub this off."