3/27/2009 12:34:00 PM When ministers break the rules, look out Sidestepping regulations is widely recognized as an indicator of corruption
Tom Vesey Sun columnist
At first I thought the case of the overturned Athlete of the Year Award was one of those weird one-off kind of things that politicians do, before they come to their senses and move on.
But when I finally started to write about how the Sports Minister overruled the decision of the Sports Award Committee and chose his own Male Athlete of the Year, I realized that it wasn't a one-off thing at all.
It was just one of a whole long list of things where Bermuda Cabinet Ministers merrily ignore the structures and procedures our society has set up to make decisions and just do... well, just do whatever it is they want to do.
Here is a sampling of recent cases.
There was a very long list of them, of course, in the recent Auditor General's report. They included how the contractors for the new police and court building were chosen against the advice of civil servants, approving payments that were not certified, allowing payments without invoices, and paying a departing tourism official way more than he was due.
Cabinet Ministers' efforts to do what they want, in defiance of the procedures and structures, included orders from the Works Minister to circumvent the Auditor General's auditing, by ordering his staff not to cooperate.
It also included a full-court effort by the Cabinet to dismiss his report, once it was made, as politically biased.
It's important to note, though, that the Auditor General is clearly able to document his assertions, despite some half-hearted attempts at rebuttal from various Government spokesmen.
But if the Auditor General feels ignored, he shouldn't feel alone. Anybody involved in the planning approval process are in the same position, except of course for the Planning Minister, and whoever it is he happens to be issuing special approvals to.
Special Development Orders are now so routine that it's laughable to think there's anything special at all about them: They are simply issued by Cabinet when they think they want to approve something that isn't allowed.
Nor does Government take the planning process seriously for its own projects.
Phase 2 of the big expansion of the Dockyard cruise ship terminal is before the Development Applications Board now - after it has already been built.
Comments from professional planners, environmental organizations and others who were by-passed in the process are a good reminder of exactly why we have these structures and procedures in the first place.
These include complaints that the environmental impact study was inadequate and incomplete, there was no study of the environmental impact of ship movements in the area, and that drainage bore holes were incomplete and had not been approved.
Big picture
Cabinet Minister are important people but they are meant to look at the big picture, not meddle in the day-to-day operations. They are meant to decide the future of the country, not slip a beach bar through the planning process or determine who becomes Athlete of the Year.
When they by-pass procedures they open the doors to inefficiency, lack of oversight, overspending, and general public frustration that people are not being treated fairly and equally.
The Auditor General's report makes it clear that, just in the Department of Tourism and in the building of the new police and courts building, millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.
It goes without saying, too, that it demoralizes people who are supposed to be involved in the process - the experts whose opinions are ignored, for example, and the hard-working members of sports awards committees whose deliberations are ignored.
It also exposes the taxpayer, and the Government, to unnecessary risks of corruption.
Just about every examination of corruption I know of, from those made by the World Bank and Transparency International to "On the Take", the classic study of political corruption by William J. Chandliss, point to indicators of corruption that are alarmingly similar to what we see here.
Among the most significant indicators are haphazardly enforced regulations and the political over-ruling of regulations - because they make it clear that decisions aren't always made "by the book".
Other indicators cited by these sources include lack of transparency and a resistance to auditing, which makes it easier for corruption to take place without anybody knowing, and can be used to cover up corruption if it is already taking place.
So what we're talking about here isn't just irritating politicians and sports awards.
We're talking about something much more fundamental than that, like whether our society is going to run well or run badly.
Reader Comments
Posted: Friday, March 27, 2009
Comment by:
chris famous
well frankly mr vesey this is what happens in any society when the people do not remind the "elected politicians" who works for whom.
as the french revolution so aptly taught us..if they say let them eat cake one too many times....
