Come 2013, the Integrity Commission will be seeking to increase and widen its powers. This was stated by its chairman Kenneth Gordon during the commission's Christmas dinner at the Hyatt Regency on Thursday. Among those in the audience were President George Maxwell Richards, Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard.
Gordon said the commission wanted to beef up its investigative powers. "Strengthening this investigative arm of the Integrity Commission has long been considered a necessary next step." He said proposals were drafted following public consultations during the year, and there will be further public consultations on the matter until the end of the year.
Recommendations to achieve that are to be submitted to the Attorney General shortly and then to Parliament. Gordon said a lot had changed in the world since the commission was established 25 years ago.
"Standards have continued to fall, confusion surrounds us, civility is threatened, good manners and courtesy are disappearing, and taking the principled and high ground on any issue is hardly understood," Gordon added.?"Divisiveness, racial undertones and a vigorous and sometimes even irreverent democracy now set a troubled agenda for our society."
Gordon said it was in that environment the commission must do its job. He said there existed "an underlying sense of justice and fair play in this country, which I am convinced can turn this situation around."
Gordon said, however, there must be institutional strengthening, which is the ultimate answer to mature nationhood. The press is another institution upon which national development must ultimately depend as it had "a particularly important role to play in that regard for its accuracy, professionalism and how it uses its freedom."
He said the press "observes its attendant obligations for the most part with responsibility. But that can never take it above the law," and the fundamental press freedom was "intended to serve the public interest, not challenge it."
Gordon, in an obvious reference to police searches at the offices of the Newsday newspaper and the home of one of its reporters, said, "It is neither a violation of, nor threat to press freedom if, acting within the law, one seeks to uncover the facts surrounding any report or story." He added that it was "only when the facts are known that truth can inform decision-making. How they are unearthed, and how they are dealt with is, of course, another matter."
President George Maxwell Richards expressed his concern over this country's rating in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index 2012. The report was released a few weeks ago and ranked T&T among the nations perceived to be most corrupt. T&T was ranked 80 in a list of 176 nations. Nations ranked closer to zero are considered very corrupt while those ranked closer to 100 were seen to be corruption-free. T&T scored 39.
Richards said on the basis of the report, "We need to sit up and take notice. We did not even score a passing grade." He noted that five other countries in the region, including Barbados which scored 76 and Dominica, which scored 58, had out-performed T&T.
He said people who said the commission had outlived its usefulness and should be abandoned were misguided, though he admitted the commission had challenges and said changes should be and were being made to strengthen the law governing it. He said the commission stood as the guardian of the social contract between people in public life, institutions and others whom it served.
"Dictatorships can proceed out of corrupt practices while a country continues to carry a fig leaf of democracy," he added.
What the Integrity Commission wants:
•Widen its investigative process to include search and seizure as well as arrest
•A regime to facilitate the exchange of information between institutions involved in the fight against corruption
• Spell out the commission's enforcement powers of investigation, summoning of witnesses and subpoena
• Verification of information on declarations and speeding up processing
• Widen the net of those required to submit declarations, including the chairman and commissioners of the Integrity Commission.