#BTColumn – Political integrity: transparent or opaque?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados TODAY Inc.

by Steve Prescott

I’ve felt strongly enough about this to ask Barbados TODAY to publish some of my thoughts recently.
And they graciously have.

I’ve noticed a theme running in the BT Columns and Editorials recently; Integrity. The questions are targeted at Public Life and I’m sure there will be a few Amens to that? Because, quite frankly, it’s an important discussion. I felt I should have responded to Bishop Joseph Atherely’s concern about campaign financing.

So, I’ll make a trite point about it now – he probably knows, since he was in Politics at the time, of a 2005 publication titled “From Grassroots to the Airwaves: Paying for Political Parties and Campaigns
in the Caribbean”.

Chapter 1; Disclosure and Enforcement of Political Party and Campaign Financing in the CARICOM States. After interviewing senior Officials of the Executives of our two mainstream parties the author records that “Campaign financing is largely unregulated and amounts and sources are generally shrouded in secrecy”. I can produce the report if anyone wants it.

We’ll leave that one there and raise the point again in 2023!

Then we’ve seen discussion around the Estimates and awarding of contracts. So I find out that Rule 239 allows Governments to circumvent the tendering process of contracts. Yet the best that one government official can come out with is to say “I don’t think I have ever broken a single financial rule; I don’t think I will do so in the future”?

Just by way of further example; (as far as I am aware) the Prevention of Corruption Act 2012 didn’t receive royal assent, the Integrity in Public Life Bill has not produced the Register of Public Interests, neither the UN Convention on Corruption or the Inter-American Convention against Corruption have been ratified by Barbados.

Then we come to the Judiciary – and this is the bit I left out in previous columns. BT, in their article “What is really happening in Barbados?”, have inspired me to focus some attention on this. I’ve said repeatedly, and I will keep on saying, I believe the political and governmental landscape in Barbados is unhealthy. There is no separation of power between the Executive and the Legislature. I hoped there would be no need to raise the same question of the Judiciary’s power being influenced by the Executive.

A while ago I did some research; and the Issue goes back (as always) to the Constitution of Barbados. I discovered 13 instances where the Governor General performs a particular function whilst “acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister”. I won’t go in to the legal definition of that phrase other than to say the natural meaning of the words perhaps reveals the legal force behind them. But the particular functions include; Appointing a Judge (s82), Removing a Judge (s82 &84) and suspending a Judge (s84(7). This is covered under the chapter that deals with the Judicature, and section 84 may be involved here.

The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Act, 2019–16 says this about s84; that essentially the Prime Minister can advise the Governor-General about the question of removing or suspending a Judge from office for inability, misbehaviour or delay and whether he ought to be investigated by a tribunal. You can read it for yourselves.

It seems to me that any Prime Minister of Barbados has some power or influence over the Judiciary.

Moreover, Barbados appears to have become accustomed to and remains passive over a governing system that perpetuates a culture of opacity, not transparency. Amidst this backdrop what are we left with? The lives of ordinary folk already negatively impacted for over 40 years, and a self-fulfilling prophecy; power without accountability delivers opacity and the appearance of corruption.

For love of country am I just plain wrong? What is really happening in Barbados?

Steve Prescott (LLB Hons) is an Employment Law Consultant & Advocate “From the People for the People”, steve@lr-and-p.com