Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion says a surge of new de­clar­ants fol­low­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion played a ma­jor role in a sharp drop in com­pli­ance among fil­ings of in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life forms.

In its 38th An­nu­al Re­port, cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od up to De­cem­ber 31, 2025, the com­mis­sion said, “An over­all com­pli­ance rate of forty-three (43 per cent) was achieved.” A steep fall from the 78 per cent record­ed in 2024.

The re­port said the new de­clar­ants placed ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the com­mis­sion’s lim­it­ed re­sources.

In the com­mis­sion’s 37th An­nu­al Re­port for 2024, it not­ed that pro­posed leg­isla­tive changes de­signed to strength­en its en­force­ment pow­ers were not sup­port­ed by Cab­i­net.

In 2025, there was no men­tion of amend­ments be­ing pro­posed or dis­cussed with Cab­i­net.

In­stead, the re­port con­firms that the com­mis­sion moved more ag­gres­sive­ly to the courts, with more than 100 court or­ders grant­ed against per­sons who failed to sub­mit their de­c­la­ra­tions.

It said 328 in­di­vid­u­als were iden­ti­fied as non-com­pli­ant, and their names were pub­lished in the Gazette and dai­ly news­pa­pers in keep­ing with statu­to­ry re­quire­ments.

Af­ter pub­li­ca­tion, the com­mis­sion ini­ti­at­ed ex parte pro­ceed­ings against about 266 in­di­vid­u­als. Pro­ceed­ings were dis­con­tin­ued in some cas­es where per­sons filed out­stand­ing de­c­la­ra­tions, were con­firmed de­ceased, or were oth­er­wise ex­empt. Of the 266 mat­ters tak­en be­fore the court, about 173 or­ders were grant­ed di­rect­ing in­di­vid­u­als to com­ply with the law.

Dur­ing the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, 239 court or­ders were served us­ing ex­ter­nal process servers, in­ter­nal ser­vice at the com­mis­sion and elec­tron­ic ser­vice in­tro­duced late in 2025.

Once served, in­di­vid­u­als are re­quired to com­ply with­in 30 days or face penal­ties un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, in­clud­ing fines or im­pris­on­ment.

Late fil­ing and non-sub­mis­sion of de­c­la­ra­tions is an on­go­ing prob­lem with­in the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

En­force­ment is still large­ly re­liant on fol­low-up and ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tion.

“Com­pli­ance is not sim­ply fil­ing a form; it must be ac­cu­rate, time­ly and ca­pa­ble of ver­i­fi­ca­tion,” the com­mis­sion said.

It al­so high­light­ed ca­pac­i­ty chal­lenges af­fect­ing both the pro­cess­ing of de­c­la­ra­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The com­mis­sion said its com­pli­ance unit con­tin­ues to op­er­ate be­low re­quired staffing lev­els, slow­ing the ex­am­i­na­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of sub­mis­sions.

It added that cold cas­es con­tin­ue to strain in­ves­tiga­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

The re­port un­der­scored per­sis­tent back­log pres­sures and on­go­ing op­er­a­tional con­straints, with dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of fil­ing and re­view process­es re­main­ing a pri­or­i­ty to man­age high vol­umes, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing elec­tions.