Integrity Commission code of conduct is redundant

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I wish to commend Prime Minister Andrew Holness for the tabling of the job description for ministers of government. The is comprehensive and well-thought-out. It had not dawned on even an avid follower of current affairs like myself that the job of a minister of government is so far-reaching.

After listening to the prime minister it is apparent to me that the Integrity Commission might not have been aware (though they must have been) about the existence of the Ministry Paper 19/2002 which establishes a code of conduct for the Cabinet.

I am of the view that it doesn’t make sense to have a body subscribe to two codes of conduct on same issue. This could lead to conflicts and untidy situations. The code proposed by the Integrity Commission suggests it is also based on the UK Nolan report. If the principles are already in place, why require another subscription to a new code?

The nature of codes of conduct is that the subscribers police them and voluntarily take action. For codes to be effective members must have a deep understanding of what they sign on to and should participate in their development. At the start of every new Cabinet newly appointed ministers are oriented to the code and asked to subscribe. In several retreats the code is discussed and reaffirmed. This process cannot be effectively done by an outside body.

In the Turks and Caicos islands (TCI) it appears that their integrity commission sets both the code of conduct and the salaries of the parliamentarians. I suspect that members of the Jamaican Integrity Commission might have worked in the Turks and Caicos system. However, such powers accorded to an integrity commission is an unusual practice for a sovereign jurisdiction.

The TCI is a British overseas territory which has another layer of supervision of a dependent government. Jamaica’s Cabinet is a constitutional creature with the ultimate power and discretion in policy and direction of the government. The standards to which it adheres must be determined by itself, as it does every other area of policy. In my view, no other body should seek to impose its will on Cabinet unless legislatively or constitutionally empowered to do so. The same is true for Parliament, all the parliaments have sought to develop their own codes. They have not allowed an external body and especially one that reports to it to impose on Pparliament.

While for some it might appear that the imposition of an externally generated code of conduct is a good thing, for those who understand governance and democracy, it is clearly part of this accretion process of moving authority from elected institutions to non-elected institutions. It is a slow and insidious undermining of our democracy and the start of a new kind of autocracy, the dictatorship of the bureaucrats. Jamaica should not go down that path.

BERNARD HEADLEY