Editorial | Good governance and accountability

People, especially those in public office, should know when it is sensible to shut their mouths and humbly accept culpability for their wrongs, rather than attempt an obfuscatory spin that merely ties themselves into knots.

Keisha Lewis, the People’s National Party (PNP) councillor for the Lauriston division in the St Catherine Municipal Authority, is one who needs to learn this lesson. She appears to be pleading ignorance of her obligations and the associated penalties for failing to file with the Integrity Commission (IC), in a timely manner, her annual income, assets and liability statements.

Christopher Tufton, the health minister, may not have gone as far to evade responsibility. However, the minister cannot sell as vindication an investigative report by the IC that found no evidence that he gave specific directives for the hiring of a marketing firm, owned by a personal friend, to do work for the ministry he heads.

The IC’s director of investigation, in fact, concluded that Minister Tufton, in his engagements with his officials and technocrats, “appeared to have advanced a private interest, which resulted in a monetary benefit to Market Me Consulting Limited, of which Ms Lyndsey McDonnough is a co-managing director and an individual with whom, at the material time, he had a friendship”.

Dr Tufton’s action, the commission found, “gave rise to, at its lowest, a perceived conflict of interest”, thus contravening the principles of good governance.

The report also highlighted that, in several instances, contracts by the health ministry, and related agencies, appear to have been broken into smaller chunks, so as to fall below the J$1.5 million threshold at which they would become liable for public tender under the government’s procurement rules.

Dr Tufton has relied on the implicit finding of the report that there was no theft or kickback in his ministry’s arrangements with Market Me.

VALUE FOR THEIR MONEY

And the marketing company did decent work. So the case can be made that taxpayers got value for their money.

“I regret any hurt or reputational damage that may have resulted from the prolonged public scrutiny,” Dr Tufton has said of the findings. “I am, however, pleased that the IC has reported no illegality by any party involved, and I am relieved that the report brings clarity to the facts.”

Good governance, though, is not always determined by whether an action is illegal, or whether a worthy deliverable was received. It is sometimes, as in this case, about a level playing field, one where everyone has an equal opportunity and on which the family, friends, colleagues and associates of public officials enjoy no preferences.

It does appear to have played out that way in this matter. Which is disappointing, because Dr Tufton understands these things.

But it is not only the minister who failed in this issue. The public servants in the health ministry who approved the contracts to Market Me, notwithstanding any introductions by Dr Tufton, could have held their ground and insisted on other approaches.

Now the case of Ms Lewis. She failed to file her statutory reports for 2019, 2020 and 2022 without providing good grounds for her tardiness, which is an offence under the Integrity Commission Act.

GIVEN AN OPPORTUNITY

She was given an opportunity to pay a fixed penalty fine of J$250,000 for the breach, in lieu of being brought before the court on a criminal charge. That arrangement in the Integrity Commission Act is not fundamentally dissimilar to paying a fine for a traffic ticket.

In the IC’s case, though, paying the fine does not remove the obligation to file the statements for which the public official was fined. And neither does delivering the statements after the due, or extended, dates erase the breach. The offence stands.

But Ms Lewis claims in a statement: “I had believed that filing within the (many times extended) timeframe specified by the IC officer would have resolved the matter without adverse action, including penalty. Notably, I did not receive any further communication from the IC with regard to the penalty … .”

To which we say, Balderdash!

Mr Lewis’ grasp at ignorance might have had some weight if similar issues had not played out before, and a similar excuse, in almost the same words, wasn’t offered by one of her party colleagues – the recently returned member of parliament for Central Westmoreland, Dwayne Vaz.

In April last year, Mr Vaz, who had lost his seat in the 2020 general election, pleaded guilty in a Parish Court for failing, over an extended period, to answer follow-up questions on his business interest related to his 2019 integrity filings.

He, too, was offered a chance to pay the fixed penalty fine. He didn’t. Mr Vaz then issued a convoluted explanation for his failure and why he thought, having eventually provided the requested information, he didn’t need to pay the fine.

Where was Ms Lewis during all of this?