The Tribune

• Graft low: Nation No.2 in the Caribbean

• But ORG chief gives ‘status quo’ warning

• And says ‘piecemeal’ reforms insufficient

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ latest relatively favourable corruption ranking “doesn’t tell the full picture”, governance reformers warned yesterday, as they urged it to “grow a culture of integrity”.

Matt Aubry, the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s (ORG) executive director, told Tribune Business that The Bahamas needed to guard against complacency after Transparency International’s just-released Corruption Perceptions Index 2021 ranked this nation 30th out of 180 when it came to graft.

The Bahamas dropped one spot compared to the 2020 rankings, where it was rated 29th, swapping positions with Barbados, which replaced it as the Caribbean’s least corrupt country according to the global transparency watchdog. The Bahamas’ ‘score’ remained flat at 64, which was two points below the peak result achieved in 2016.

Besides being ranked as less corrupt than virtually all its Caribbean neighbours, at least when it came to impressions, The Bahamas also scored better than the likes of South Korea and Israel plus many developed European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Italy.

And this nation finished just two spots, and three points, below the 28th ranked United States of America, whose federal government has continued to bash The Bahamas in successive reports for having a “political system beleaguered by reports of corruption” and a culture of “accepting small-scale ‘bribes of convenience’”.

Based on the Transparency International rankings, some observers will argue that the US has little standing to point accusing fingers at The Bahamas. However, Mr Aubry yesterday voiced concern that this nation’s ranking among the world’s top-sixth least corrupt nations could lull it into a false sense of security, and a desire to retain “the status quo”, when all is not well.

The ORG chief, pointing out that the same Transparency International found The Bahamas leads the Latin American and Caribbean region for paying “bribes of convenience” to public officials as recently as 2019, said studies conducted by the group “clearly show citizens are not happy” about the unfairness and graft they encounter in dealing with this nation’s public bodies.

Suggesting that The Bahamas’ static position in the rankings shows it is not making meaningful progress in cracking down on corruption and related activities, Mr Aubry urged the Government to go beyond “piecemeal” reforms and instead adopt a comprehensive “anti-corruption strategy” complete with legislative reforms such as the long-awaited Integrity Commission.

Calling on The Bahamas to “seize this critical opportunity”, he added that such changes would show The Bahamas is serious about cracking down on corruption that is estimated to cost the country “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually.

This, in turn, would help attract “the best and brightest” in foreign direct investment (FDI) and “unleash the full creativity of the private sector” at a time when the country most needs a major economic boost following the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastation.

“It’s a where it takes a bit of the pressure off,” Mr Aubry explained of The Bahamas’ Transparency International ranking. “We can say we’re 30th in the world and that’s not bad. But it doesn’t tell the full picture, it doesn’t speak to the full impact on citizens.

“We’ve done studies, and it’s clear citizens are not happy. We are confronted with a sense that things are not equal, and inequities breed less trust in government, and that’s where things break down. There’s less compliance, less belief in reforms and things that are put forward.

“We have to change perceptions locally and internationally. Being 30th in the world may mean we’re not the Democratic Republic of Congo or South Sudan, but it means that we want to move this needle when we’ve been in the same space for a while, moving one place up, one place down. It [the ranking] reinforces the status quo,” he added.

“There’s a massive opportunity for The Bahamas if we want to grow. There are a lot of things happening today, so that people would start to believe in a new way and culture of integrity, but we haven’t marshalled them.... If we do it piecemeal we won’t be seen as addressing this issue, and making it a top-line issue that The Bahamas wants to promote.”

The former Minnis administration brought Bills to establish an Integrity Commission, which would receive and vet corruption-related complaints against the likes of ministers, MPs and public officials, as well as the creation of an Ombudsman to redress complaints by citizens over their treatment by government agencies, to Parliament but they were never debated or passed into law.

These Bills fell off the legislative agenda when the House of Assembly was prorogued for the September 16 general election. The Davis administration, when in Opposition, promised to revive these Bills and pass a package of anti-corruption laws within 100 days of taking office but that timeframe has now gone and it is uncertain where this falls on its list of priorities.

Mr Aubry, voicing fears that other countries will bypass The Bahamas while it remains static in the Transparency International rankings, argued that this nation needs to pass “a national anti-corruption strategy that takes out the political rhetoric” and places decisions on graft-related complaints in “apolitical” hands.

He added that ORG had recently met with the parliamentary speaker in the Turks & Caicos Islands, who voiced enthusiasm for the benefits its Integrity Commission-equivalent has brought. “It’s a measure of corruption perceptions,” Mr Aubry said of Transparency International. “Perception is something we have to take seriously because it affects our competitiveness.

“When you look at the index, it’s important to understand we’re being rated against other countries. Our position is based as it relates to what other countries are doing. There are lots of bad actors in that list, and we don’t want to fall into that category, but it doesn’t meant our perception of corruption doesn’t matter when we’re seeking to attract the best and brightest FDI and unleash the full creativity of the private sector.”

Many Bahamians, residents and foreign investors will speak privately about the low-level, everyday corruption they have encountered when seeking to obtain government permits and services. And Mr Aubry referred to the 2019 Transparency International survey that found The Bahamas led the Western Hemisphere in “paying bribes without being asked”.

“It’s a matter of course, where people believe it’s the system and just follow through,” Mr Aubry said of an endemic culture that he described as a “pay to play” environment. “There’s this low level corruption that most of our citizens expect to run into at public offices,” he added.

Acknowledging the Government’s efforts to digitise many such services to reduce the opportunity for corruption, the ORG chief said: “People’s perceptions are that this is always how government operates. We have to do something to change the paradigm and put forward something to say how we grow this culture of integrity.”

While some would argue there are more pressing issues to address amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Aubry argued that The Bahamas “doesn’t have that opportunity, that surplus” to continue losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually due to the waste of taxpayer funds, contracts being awarded to the least qualified bidders and investors that went elsewhere.

Describing The Bahamas’ relatively small 400,000 population size as “both a blessing and a curse”, he added it was harder to protect evidence and encourage whistleblowers to come forward in a society where everyone knows each other and many persons are connected by interlocking family relationships.

But commerce and society, Mr Aubry said, flourish best in an environment “not based on who you know or have to pay because corruption is the rule of the day.... where you can grow your business in a direct way without having to find doors for access and opportunity.

“That opens the door for less than best-in-class, who can then settle in and not worry about diligence and being the best corporate partner,” he added.