http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061008/focus/focus2.html
Published: Sunday | October 8, 2006

First, it was Contractor General Greg Christie persistently pointing out the lack of accountability at Sandals Whitehouse. Then it was Dr. Lloyd Goldson and colleagues exposing the horrific conditions at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital. And now, it is whichever person provided Bruce Golding with the documented Trafigura money trail from Amsterdam to Team Jamaica. Yes, Mr. Golding did a fine job of presenting it to the public, but as Opposition Leader that's his job. It's the unsung hero who provided the smoking gun cheques that really deserves the praise in this instance.

One might be accident and two perhaps chance, but three is a trend. An attitude of 'I'm mad as hell and can't take it anymore' is clearly abroad in the land. Brave Jamaicans are fearlessly bringing public sector transgressions to national attention, which must be good for our democracy. Constitutions and checks and balances are fine. But, without an engaged citizenry willing to stand up and be counted, democracy withers and dies. Just ask Haiti and Cuba.

The media have of late left a lot to be desired. How could it have allowed the Government to impugn the integrity of both Mr. Christie and his office without condemning wholesale all those involved in this character assassination? It's the people's interests and the people's money and the people's laws which the man is defending. He's certainly not in it for personal gain or glory. And he's no party hack. In fact, the JLP originally opposed his appointment because of his supposed PNP inclinations.

A man doing his duty strictly out of principle should be universally lauded. And government attacks on him should be pilloried by the press as specious grandstanding at the least and possibly an outrageous attempt to obstruct justice being done. Ken Chaplin in the Daily Observer of October 3 rightly called it "disgraceful treatment".

Every citizen who cares about how the taxes we pay are spent should support Mr. Christie writing to the Director of Public Prose-cution Ken Pantry for advice on how to go about bringing criminal charges against public bodies which failed to comply with requisitions from the Office of the Contractor General. If current laws are not enough, new ones must be enacted.

ENACT LAWS

To quote Mr. Chaplin again, "The only way to deal with entities which fail to meet the requests by the contractor general is to enact into law with all deliberate haste, proposals by Christie. for punitive sanctions against public officials or public bodies which breach the Government procurement procedures and which are not now regulated by any law of Jamaica. This is a position with which the Auditor General Adrian Strachan concurs." Let's hope Mr. Pantry display the same sense of public duty and honour as Mr. Christie and Mr. Strachan.

The death of an infant at Jubilee Hospital owing to lack of proper equipment was nothing less than a national disgrace. Some apologists will wave away the US$43 million cost overruns at Sandals Whitehouse and, J$31 million into party coffers as just 'more of the same'. But there's no spin doctoring away a lifeless little body and grieving mother. As Dr. Goldson said, "It just does not get much worse than that."

Dr. Goldson deserves nothing but commendations for exposing the inadequacies of Jubilee Hospital. But, as Claude Robinson put it in the October 1 Sunday Observer, "Instead of praise, he has been hauled over the coals by bureaucrats in health administration - permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Grace Allen Young's protestations, notwithstanding, the 'reminder' of the protocols governing unfree speech, sound very much like a reprimand to me - the incident raised several fundamental questions [including] the role of 'whistle-blowers' in good governance."

SMELLS TO HIGH HEAVEN

Too many public servants seem more interested in shooting the messengers of wrongdoing and bad management than in correcting the problems they pointed out. Some pedants even expressed more outrage over the appearance of the Trafigura cheques than the wholesale lack of transparency in the Nigerian Oil deal. This arrangement is supposed to benefit the Jamaican people. Yet over the last year, less than US$200,000 went into the public purse, while in September alone over US$500,000 was transferred from Trafigura to a PNP campaign fund account. This smells to high heaven. (These were the latest figures heard on Thursday morning going to press.)

Why would any self-respecting political party accept funding from a company like Trafigura? It was accused of illegal payments to the murderous Saddam Hussein in the UN oil-for-food scandal. Last month, two of its executives were charged in connection with the Ivory Coast toxic waste discharge that killed seven people and hospitalised another 40,000. Is Team Jamaica funded by poor people's money or by blood money?

Why would a Dutch based multi-national like Trafigura donate half a million US to a Jamaican political party? None of its principals live or were born here, so it can't be a desire for good governance of their homeland. Nor can they have long term bonds of kinship with any PNP executive. So was this payment for either past services rendered or for future services expected? (Concise OED : kickback - payment for help in making profit). Interestingly, according to the October 5th Observer editorial, the Trafigura contract is renewed each year without tender. As Sherlock Holmes said "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

For a Jamaican political party to accept a huge donation from a foreign company employed by the Jamaican government represents at the minimum a conflict of interest and is glaringly inappropriate. In democracies with a sense of shame, such as Britain, America or Canada, those directly implicated would surely have resigned.

DONATIONS REPRESENT A FRACTIONOF EARNINGS

Political donations typically represent only a small fraction of a company's earnings. For Trafigura to donate US$500,000 to a Jamaican political party suggests it has made many times this on its Jamaican related operations.

Every detail of the Nigerian oil dealings - including the relationship between Trafigura and Good Works - must now be made public. This should include full disclosure of the contract between the Petroleum Company of Jamaica and Trafigura. Just how much oil has Jamaica received from Nigeria and at what cost? At what price was it resold? What share of the proceeds did the Jamaican nation receive? The JLP should not enter Parliament again until these go on the public record. We the people have a right to see our money accounted for.

Sadly, many put party before country and see everything through green or orange spectacles. But no organisation has a monopoly on virtue or the lack of it. By their deeds shall they be known. This PNP administration has governed for 17 years and must take the blame for what has happened on its watch, as the JLP would have had to do had it been in power.

Jamaicans have to decide what kind of country they want. Citizens in other places have staged mass demonstrations over far less serious instances of corruption and misadministration. Our people should now be sending an unequivocal message to the Prime Minister - either expel all those implicated in these affairs from your cabinet and put proper systems in place, or prepare to be swept out of power. But maybe, as Mark Wignall suggested in his column last Sunday, voters are silently planning to do so.

Cynics talk about a lack of education and a sensationalist media and biased commentators. But, if we can't make the connection between millions of dollars being squandered and babies dying for lack of basic equipment, well we deserve filthy death-trap hospitals and shoddy substandard schools and pot-holed goat track roads.