Clevon Raphael

The Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil is press­ing ahead with its pro­pos­al for more ef­fec­tive leg­is­la­tion to con­trol and reg­u­late pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy in the pub­lic sec­tor.Pres­i­dent of the sev­en-mem­ber group Afra Ray­mond is adamant that Gov­ern­ment must take the JCC's points in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is de­bat­ed in the Par­lia­ment.

He is warn­ing that gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments do not guar­an­tee that huge state projects would not be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the brush of cor­rup­tion, and al­though the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion is in­tro­duc­ing new leg­is­la­tion to deal with this thorny is­sue, much more needs to be done.

Q: Mr Ray­mond, is it fair to say the JCC is a pres­sure group, po­lit­i­cal or oth­er­wise, with­in the con­struc­tion sec­tor?

(Seat­ed in the of­fice of a spa at Val­sayn Plaza)

A: Well, it is an um­brel­la group that rep­re­sents in­ter­ests of the con­struc­tion, re­al es­tate and prop­er­ty in­dus­tries, with sev­en mem­ber groups.

This pro­cure­ment is­sue has been a source of con­tention over the years?

Yes.

Re­cent­ly the Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced leg­is­la­tion to deal with this very emo­tive is­sue?

Yes.

Are you sat­is­fied that Gov­ern­ment has made a suf­fi­cient­ly strong enough move in that di­rec­tion?

Not at all.

What is the beef you (the JCC) has with state pro­cure­ment?

The ques­tion is not with any in­di­vid­ual group hav­ing a beef. The ques­tion is: no mat­ter what gov­ern­ment we put in­to pow­er, there are con­sis­tent al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, large-scale waste and theft of pub­lic mon­ey.I think the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is a move in the right di­rec­tion, but in its present form it is not at all sat­is­fac­to­ry with what is re­quired of the coun­try...

What is it you want to see in the leg­is­la­tion that is not there now?

The main thing–I am glad you asked that ques­tion–is prop­er, ef­fec­tive pro­cure­ment law, which would bring prop­er over­sight and con­trol over all trans­ac­tions in pub­lic mon­ey–tax­pay­ers' dol­lars.The pro­pos­als tabled by Dr Tewarie in the Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, April 2, un­der Clause 7, specif­i­cal­ly ex­empts gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments...

Why is this so of­fen­sive that it should be ex­punged?

Be­cause, Clevon, quite sim­ply, when we look at Mr Man­ning's record, look at the record of this regime, the largest projects, the most ex­pen­sive projects are tak­ing place through gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments. So if you are propos­ing a pro­cure­ment frame­work to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, but want to ex­empt the largest projects, well, that is one step for­ward and two steps back­wards.Our an­swer is "No."

Mr Ray­mond, what you are do­ing there is ac­cus­ing your gov­ern­ment–whichev­er is in pow­er–and the for­eign con­tract­ing gov­ern­ment, of pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion?

Clevon, Wednes­day's rev­e­la­tion about Na­pa by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture–Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas–his re­marks are fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the Guardian from an an­swer in Par­lia­ment...about Na­pa falling apart.Those re­marks from the sit­ting min­is­ter–who is an elect­ed MP–speak to the truth of the al­le­ga­tions in these arrange­ments, and the lack of prop­er over­sight which needs to be cor­rect­ed if the coun­try is to move for­ward.

This has noth­ing to do in par­tic­u­lar with the present ad­min­is­tra­tion, and noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar with the last ad­min­is­tra­tion. The point is: it must be dealt with in a forth­right man­ner and the pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted by Dr Tewarie do not do that.

Apart from the per­ceived cor­rup­tion fac­tor in the State's pro­cure­ment process, is there a JCC hid­den po­lit­i­cal agen­da?

No. The JCC's agen­da is na­tion­al im­prove­ment.

Mr Ray­mond, what is the ul­ti­mate ef­fect on the av­er­age cit­i­zen if un­bri­dled cor­rup­tion is not stymied?

What it boils down to is two sorts of sim­ple lessons. The first thing is fi­nan­cial, just in terms of pure dol­lars and cents. At this mo­ment, the State of T&T pays more for things than any­body else...when you think of any of the big projects in the past, or any of the many, many things that are go­ing on.

The sec­ond im­pli­ca­tion is that in fact if we de­vel­op a sce­nario–which is what is hap­pen­ing–where most of the busi­ness in the coun­try takes place through the State, what hap­pens is that nor­mal peo­ple who are not po­lit­i­cal, not part of the po­lit­i­cal sce­nario, if they want to get a con­tract, they may have to en­ter in­to some kind of im­prop­er deal­ings.

Mr Ray­mond, I might be na�ve, but do you be­lieve that peo­ple who en­ter pub­lic of­fice go there to steal tax­pay­ers' mon­ey?

(Hands rest­ing across his chest and a heavy sigh) That is dif­fi­cult to an­swer, Clevon...I will at­tempt to an­swer in an hon­est way, not di­rect­ly, but in my own way.

I am putting it this way: the sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try is that...the con­trols that we have at this mo­ment–re­gard­ing mon­ey, con­tracts and so on–are so poor, so weak...if you, me or the most hon­est friend we have be­comes Prime Min­is­ter in the morn­ing, im­me­di­ate­ly you have to find a Cab­i­net of about 20 peo­ple, im­me­di­ate­ly you have to find about 1,500 peo­ple to put on boards and com­mis­sions...this is how the coun­try runs.

And be­cause of the large amount of mon­ey and the weak con­trols, with­in a month or two months, those same friends may well be com­mit­ting acts that may em­bar­rass you.I am not try­ing to ex­on­er­ate the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion or the last one–I am a crit­i­cal per­son when I need to be. The point I am mak­ing is: who­ev­er you put, temp­ta­tion is a hel­lu­va thing...I am just putting that back to you as an at­tempt to an­swer.

Quite cor­rect Mr Ray­mond, but are you in­sin­u­at­ing that our brand of politi­cians are in­trin­si­cal­ly dis­hon­est?

(Briefly con­tem­plat­ing the re­sponse) I am say­ing the temp­ta­tions are huge; the pun­ish­ment is small and in­fre­quent; and you see it in the dri­ving on the roads, you see it in the columns writ­ten by peo­ple like you and me. If you do not have prop­er con­se­quences for bad be­hav­iour, you get these prob­lems. It is not the per­fect so­lu­tion, but you have to bring in­to place some laws which could have some pos­i­tive ef­fect on the sit­u­a­tion–which is what we are fight­ing for.

Be­fore Dr Tewarie took the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment, did you have con­sul­ta­tions with the Gov­ern­ment?

Yes, we met with the Gov­ern­ment's leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee be­fore the leg­is­la­tion was fi­nalised and we have had con­sul­ta­tions; but our points were not tak­en on board.It was tabled in the Par­lia­ment and Dr Tewarie has said that he is al­low­ing a pe­ri­od of at least three weeks to take pub­lic com­ments, but we think that is too short. It is a com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter.

So you would be sub­mit­ting ad­di­tion­al com­ments? Are you op­ti­mistic that the JCC's con­cerns would be ad­dressed this time?

Not with­out a se­ri­ous strug­gle.

I have been fol­low­ing this pro­cure­ment thing for sev­er­al years, es­pe­cial­ly through the ef­forts of the lo­cal branch of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al when Mr Vic­tor Hart was at its fore­front. Why has it proven to be that dif­fi­cult for suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to pass the nec­es­sary laws to sat­is­fy the con­cerns of groups like yours?

As I said, temp­ta­tion is a hel­lu­va of thing...it is uni­ver­sal.

But in T&T, are wrong­do­ers not made to face the con­se­quences of acts of dis­hon­esty, as in for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions?

This is what we are fight­ing for, Clevon, and I want to make my­self to­tal­ly clear: we are fight­ing for a sys­tem of laws that will bring about a dy­nam­ic ef­fec­tive pub­lic of­fi­cial who would reg­u­late, who would in­ter­vene in sit­u­a­tions where there is wrong­do­ing, ir­re­spec­tive of the po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion, and take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to pro­tect the pub­lic. Rec­ti­fy im­prop­er con­tracts.

Mr Ray­mond, the fact this ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en leg­isla­tive ac­tion to deal with this thorny is­sue: isn't that a sign of good faith?

We need to mea­sure that state­ment, which has some per­sua­sive mea­sures, against the fact that spe­cif­ic ex­clu­sions were made with the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments.

If his­to­ry is any guide, can it be said that these large gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment projects are a cov­er for cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties?

(Fin­ger on lips and hushed tone) Yeah, I think so. We had an episode of it last year with a hos­pi­tal pro­posed for Pe­nal, and af­ter some pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy, the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed.

Again, isn't that an in­di­ca­tion that this Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous on the ques­tion of cor­rup­tion?

Yes, they took ac­count of the con­cerns; it was with­drawn. But what I find in­ter­est­ing is: that depth of con­cern hasn't found its way in­to the bill.