Frustrated Integrity Commission chairman speaks up
Resignation en masse by members of the Belize Governance Improvement Commission has effectively put the spotlight on the work of similar bodies and their ability to further the cause of good government. Tonight News Five features a one on one conversation with Chairman of the Integrity Commission, Christopher Coye. And as he maintains, no matter how futile the effort might seem, corruption has to be weeded out of government.
Christopher Coye
?It does get frustrating, but there is a job to do, the Commission does exist and I wouldn?t want for us to just throw up our hands or any of us to just throw up our hands and say we don?t have the ability to do what we want. We will never have the ability to do what we want, it?s always a process.?
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
It would appear that?s the reality of being on a Commission in Belize today. Take the Integrity Commission for example; in June members submitted its fifth report under the Prevention of Corruption in Public Life Act. But after the Opposition and the Speaker?s melee in the House that month, the document slipped through the cracks of the National Assembly and off the local news radar.
Christopher Coye
?And since then, we have never had any comment on a private basis either, whether from the Government or the Opposition.?
But just a cursory glance of that report highlights some interesting facts and feelings. For one thing, the very first page of the report is entitled ?Why Anti-Corruption Agencies Fail.? That list includes weak political will, lack of resources, inadequate laws, and failure to win the involvement of the community. Chair of the Integrity Commission is Christopher Coye.
Christopher Coye, Chairman, Integrity Commission
?We are facing some of them, whether it?s as you say, weak political will as it says there, and some of the other points, there are varying levels of existence of those factors. I think with the way the report was set out, it was to bring attention to the weaknesses.?
And according to Coye, those weaknesses include failure to define whether the commission is quasi-judicial in capacity or limited to investigations, fundamental functions which need to be clarified.
Christopher Coye
?In terms of those two functions, you have really what I call it an audit function, receiving and reviewing declarations, verifying the accuracy of them; and the second function is to review and investigate complaints in relation to one, the complaints, and two, the allegations of breach of the code of conduct that is actually set out for public officers.?
?We have looked at similar laws in other jurisdictions or even proposals for it for laws in other jurisdictions and this is certainly a lot less weaker in not only what it covers, but also in its enforcement capabilities.?
Today, the Commission cannot even force members of the public service to declare income and assets for verification…and has resorted to appealing for assistance to both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition to have their party members comply with the law. While Coye admits that the forms are complicated, the Chairman contends that even those people who do complete the paperwork have to be accepted at their oath because there have never been any complaints from the public on the information submitted in the declarations. And just to muddy the waters even more, even if there was to be a complaint, it is still unclear whether the commission would be able to take any legal action against that violator.
Christopher Coye
?Having the legal advisor to the commission being the Solicitor General, I feel that we as a Commission are again, held in chains in a sense in what we can do. I won?t want to take proceedings and not be able to have it done properly or pass it through the process without having to deal with procedural irregularities or things of that sort, so when it comes to proceedings for defaults or failures to comply, there is what we grapple with as a Commission. How do we proceed, we don?t have a budget to hire an attorney on our own, so then we are left with what the laws provides for us. And as the report indicates, we don?t have much response from our legal advisor.?
?As far as our investigative powers and the scope of it, we seek the advice, we seek legal advice again, but how do we proceed if we don?t get that legal advice.?
Coye hopes that one day not only will the laws give the Commission the teeth they need, but that it will also expand to include those people in the private sector who collude in corruption with public servants.
Christopher Coye
?In terms of a corrupt practice or a corrupt act, it has to involve two persons. So the public officer cannot just simply be corrupt on his own, you may well have a private person involved. And in the way in which the code of conduct sets out, I believe that that should be addressed as well. The person that is, the counterparty that is engaging in the corrupt act with the public officer, if it is a public officer.?
According to Coye, Belmopan has promised the commission independent staff and space to establish a full time secretariat. We understand that one of the secretariat’s first duties will be to devise more user friendly declaration forms.
