The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunmedia.net

THE ten years it took for the Child & Adolescent and Robert Smith complex in Fox Hill to open and the lack of clarity surrounding the delay is a “complete disgrace”, Central Eleuthera MP Damian Gomez said yesterday.

The former Cabinet minister’s comment came as he spoke to The Tribune about the lack of progress the government has made on issues relating to transparency and accountability, such as campaign finance laws and a more open contract procurement system.

Prime Minister Perry Christie commissioned the Robert Smith complex – which opens to patients today – last week, ten years after construction on the facility began.

Minister of Labour and National Insurance Shane Gibson told The Tribune yesterday that part of the reason for the delay is that the first two contractors of the facility were terminated, prompting sub-contractors to complete the project.

He said he did not know off-hand how much the facility cost over the course of its construction or the precise details of why the contractors were fired.

Edward Penn, a prominent PLP financial backer, and Floyd Wilmott, a FNM supporter, were the terminated contractors, both of them having received their contracts under the administration of their respective political parties.

“It’s a complete disgrace,” Mr Gomez said when contacted yesterday. “It’s not as though it’s not affecting communities. I can’t get a hospital finished in my constituency but we could have buildings in New Providence bandying around for a decade and people don’t have to account for money they have received?”

The former state minister for legal affairs has waged a largely unsuccessful battle to prompt the government to embrace certain transparency and accountability reforms.

He said he tried getting his parliamentary colleagues for instance, to agree to a public registry in Parliament for donations they receive in aid of their constituencies.

“I asked but people don’t want that sort of information out,” he said yesterday.

“That might explain why certain people get contracts and some don’t,” he added, though not as a reference to the Robert Smith complex, which Mr Gibson said yesterday he is willing to divulge more details about when he receives them.

“Almost 200 years of behaviour is being challenged,” Mr Gomez said. “It’s not going to be stopped because one person says let’s change. When you look at the opposition, for instance, they have their people who, when they are in power they get contracts and they expect to get them and they do. So you’re not going to find them being particularly energetic in cutting off a source of profits for themselves.”

Mr Gomez’s willingness to highlight lack of transparency in general and to imply shady behaviour concerning contracts is unusual for a former Cabinet member under a sitting government.

He said yesterday that he would be in “complete shock” if the government were to pass campaign finance legislation before the next general election.

This comes despite the fact that Mr Christie has backed such legislation in the past, once describing campaign financing in the Bahamas as having sunk to “repugnant” and sometimes “criminal” levels.

“In any administration here, a non-political guy who just started a company is going to be at a disadvantage,” Mr Gomez said.

He said greater transparency and accountability would not only improve the public’s trust in government, but would improve economic conditions in the country as well.

“There are economic benefits associated with being an honest jurisdiction, often enjoyed in several ways by the public,” he said. “There are greater employment levels, generated by efficiency in the system. We are struggling with a 15 per cent unemployment rate and a high youth unemployment rate. Those sorts of problems are not going to be solved in a closed shop department where politicos are determining who gets what and who doesn’t.”

Ultimately, he said the government has been too content to stay in the “middle of the pack” on the global community when it comes to fighting corruption.

“There are countries who are worse than us so we are not going to see very much commentary about us on the world stage because it would come with a lot of other countries being criticised as well,” he said. “And, to be fair, we are more honest than many countries. Where we are falling down is in taking the attitude that being in the middle of the pack is okay. We should be in the number one, two or three position.”

In addition to campaign finance laws and a registry system to log constituency donations, Mr Gomez aligned himself yesterday with the business community and others in the country in calling for more transparency in contract procurement processes.

“What I don’t want to happen is to add new bureaucracy without results,” he said about growing calls for an Office of the Contractor General, as advocated for recently by former Attorney General Alfred Sears.

“If we’re going to have a new one and it’s business as usual, I’m not interested in that. My position is that we have a Tenders Board and their work should be done in the public. Bids should be open. Someone in the Ministry of Works concerned with construction should do reports on a quarterly basis as need be and make it available to the auditor general who would make the report available to the Speaker (of the House of Assembly) on a determined basis. When bids go to the Tenders Board, the board should give an account for why it selects who it selects. And the next question should be, ‘has the guy performed?’ And if he hasn’t, he should be sued.”