Senator Lambert Brown hates corruption with a passion. Many of us worry about him when there are senate sittings. Choking with rage and righteousness at the very hint of this scourge, we harbour fears of a myocardial infarction. His comrade leader, Dr. Peter Phillips is also having sleepless nights. Corruption is one of the reasons. So these men have combined to throw their considerable weight on top of this problem which, if they are to be believed, is a menace of recent vintage.
I have a little longer memory. I am now beginning to think there is a psychology and a physics to it for which there may never be a perspicuous or ratiocinative response.
Political corruption has been defined as the use of power by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain. This could include bribery, extortion, cronyism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, or just plain ‘teefing’.
It’s not as if it was ushered in by the present government, as comrades Brown and Phillips would have us believe. Unfortunately, most of the discussions centre around who on which side did what, when and how much. I do not think this is particularly helpful in finding a solution. First, we must understand that this is not new and did not start in this country or with this government.
In 1621, our colonial masters – the English – had a problem. The Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, the highest legal officer in the land, was accused of bribery. Impeachment – trial by Parliament – was resurrected from its 150-year hiatus. He was tried, found guilty, fired, fined, and thrown into the Tower of London, never to see ‘daylight’ again. Well … not really. As it turns out, he only spent three days there as he was able to bribe the presiding judge. In an effort to salvage his reputation during the trial, he argued, earnestly, that he always accepted these ‘gifts’ from both sides.
Our worshipped masters to the north are also struggling badly. Some examples of recent vintage are:
The 2008 Financial Crisis
The Boeing 737 Max
The college admissions scam
And with 113,100 people being shot in that country each year, 38,000 fatally, they seem unable to enact basic, common sense gun laws. Why? Well the National Rifle Association is a powerful force in Washington. They make substantial ‘campaign contributions’ to politicians. This money goes disproportionately to Republicans who block every attempt to deal with this matter. So another 38,000 will die next year.
When Jamaica gained its independence in 1962, one of my teachers, Mr. Mac, told me that Jamaica’s only hindrance to major development was our ‘small size’. That year, an article appeared in the New York Times about The Cayman Islands, which Jamaica administered. The title of the article was “The Islands Time Forgot”. The prime minister of Singapore also visited. At the time Singapore was a poor and corrupt. He said he was cherry picking countries that were ‘poised for take-off’ to get ideas for his development programme.
The Cayman Islands is a major international financial centre. Tax free, 92,000 companies are registered there. This includes more than 500 banks and trust companies with banking assets exceeding US$500 billion.
Today, Singapore, which has to import water, has a highly developed free-market economy with the third highest per capita GDP in the world.
The per capita income of The Cayman Islands is US$55,000. Singapore’s is US$65,600. Jamaica, which is 42 times the size of the Cayman Islands, and 15 times the size of Singapore, has a per capita income of US$5,000. What’s happening here? What went wrong? When did it go wrong?
Singapore is the third-least corrupt country in the world. It has a zero tolerance approach to corruption. The general provisions are found in sections 5 and 6 of the Prevention of Corruptions Act (PCA) (Chapter 241), which applies to both public and private corruption. Section 7 of the PCA provides for enhanced penalties for an offence under 5 and 6, where the corruption relates to government corruption.
Corruption normalised
I remember loaded trucks rumbling through a residential area late at night only to hear that a man had got a government contract to build a school and was ‘pinching off some of the material’. In disbelief, I snooped and saw six two-bedroom flats under construction.
A credit supervisor in the US was also on the payroll of the most cash-starved, haemorrhaging government agency in Jamaica.