Payne sounds caution on new crime-fighter’s oversight

Labour Party backbench MP George Payne has voiced his dissatisfaction with the way a committee to oversee the new Anti-Corruption and Anti-Terrorism Agency is to be selected as the bill to establish it went before Parliament Tuesday.

Calling for even greater transparency during the selection process, the veteran lawyer and former cabinet minister blamed the previous administration for a lack of public confidence amid questions surrounding its statements on public corruption. He said the bill to establish the agency, which provides for the seven-member oversight committee, needs to do more in order to restore public trust and accountability.

The anti-corruption and anti-terrorism agency, to be headed by a director-general who would be appointed by the Governor General, is to be governed by an oversight committee with a five-year term of office.

The committee would include a retired Judge of the High Court, a retired police officer not below the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police, a retired BDF officer not below the rank of Colonel and a Minister of Religion.

The St Andrew MP said: “This legislation should have said something as to what would change a situation which operated during the last ten years, the area of the lost decade. The point I am trying to make is that in looking at the composition of this committee, it has not changed anything to correct that omission.

“Let us assume that this legislation was passed a few months before the last general election, seven members of the committee were appointed by the Governor General on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, the same Prime Minister who was responsible for the mismanagement of the government in the last election. We would have been unable as a government who won 30 seats, to change anything.”

To make the selection process as open and transparent as possible, Payne suggested similar procedures followed in the United States Senate. He was referring to the body’s “advise and consent” role in which nominee federal judges, cabinet officers and senior public officials are first interviewed by a sub-committee which then confirms or denies Senate approval by majority vote.

Payne declared: “I believe that we as parliamentarians should be given the opportunity of debating in this House, the selection of those members or recommendations to the Governor General. The question of appointments in some countries, the United States is a good example; all the ministers, all the various important officers, they come before the House of Representatives. There are Presidents of the United States who have been disappointed because of their recommendations, not only in terms of ministers but in terms of judges.

“I believe that in this situation, seeing that corruption took a turn which caused us to make certain pointers during the last election, I think that we should utilize the opportunity… No one person should be allowed to appoint seven members to this commission.” (SB)